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GEORGE JUNKIN, D.D., LL.D. 




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THE REVEREND 



GEORGE JUNKIN, D.D., LL.D. 



HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY. 



V? X.^JUNKIN, D.D. 




" Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
1871. 



tJZvJ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



no 
YD 



PREFACE. 



N° h : 



man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to 



dowments, education, resources, or social position, 
each member of the human family stands so related to 
others and to the whole, that his life and death must 
affect others for weal or woe. Each individual makes 
the world different from what it would have been 
without him ; and it is a process, by no means useless 
or uninteresting, to trace the relations of the individual 
to society, and the influence which he imparts to or 
receives from it. It is by this process that the philos- 
ophy of life, individual and social, is to be ascertained, 
and its lessons made available. 

The spirit of inspiration recognizes these great 
truths, not only in the Scripture cited above, but in 
many others, and in the fact that the Holy Boole is 
largely occupied with biographical sketches of the 
godly and the wicked that have lived of old ; the one 
class being designed for examples, the other, for %varn- 
ings, to those who should live after. Inspired biog- 
raphy, it is true, is the only infallible record of the 
kind ; and it is in reference to it, doubtless, that 
the apostolic exhortation is given, " Be ye followers 
(imitators) of them who, through faith and patience, 
inherit the promises." But inasmuch as the ordinary 
i* f v) 



I 2 



vi PREFACE. 

grace of God produces similar results in the formation 
of character, in whatever age or nation its subject may- 
live, the record of children of God who have been 
illustrious for natural endowments, great attainments, 
or valuable services may be greatly useful, even when 
penned by uninspired agency. The life of a Payson 
may prove as beneficial as that of a Paul, saving the 
fallibility of the record ; for, apart from his inspiration, 
Paul was a mere man, and the grace of God which 
made him what he was, was the same that wrought in 
Payson, and the God of grace is entitled to a revenue 
of glory from every generation of men. It is well to 
mark the progress of the Saviour's work as illustrated 
in each successive age, and in every land ; and the 
very peculiarities of each become instructive, and im- 
part a freshness to the lessons derived from the 
examples of the holy. 

There is one characteristic of inspired biography 
which we in vain expect in any merely human writing, 
— that is, its uncompromising faithfulness. It 

" Nothing extenuates, nor sets down aught in malice." 

Unlike all human narratives, it records, with severe 
accuracy, the faults, as well as the virtues, of its favorite 
characters. Its portraits are sternly truthful ; it 
knows no flattery ; its characters are truthfully human. 
From an American biography of our beloved and 
revered Washington, no one can gather that he had 
any faults or frailties ; but whe*n the character of the 
prince of the patriarchs, or of the Washington of Israel, 
is portrayed, their faults and frailties are faithfully 
recorded. The sacred biographies are no fancy 
sketches, but are drawn unerringly from life. Were 



PREFACE. vii 

there no other proof of the inspiration of the Scriptures, 
this characteristic alone would mark the Bible as 
divine, and prove that its writers must have been con- 
strained by the spirit of truth faithfully to record 
facts, which stain the reputation of their favorite 
personages, and which pride and patriotism would 
tempt them to suppress. 

To such perfection of faithfulness the writer of the 
following biography does not lay claim, — he is con- 
scious of a love and veneration for its subject that 
might swerve to partiality a sterner nature than his 
own, — but it has been his aim, and his prayer, and his 
steadfast effort to be faithful to truth in the array of 
facts ; and to let the facts, rather than epithets, portray 
the life of the man and the minister whose story he 
here places on record. Conscious that the task is 
dictated by fraternal love, such as rarely glows in 
human hearts, and by a reverence almost filial, which 
the close familiarity of fifty years has never abated, 
he has striven to guard against the errors into which 
such feelings might betray him ; and he fears that he 
has sometimes become frigid, in his effort to avoid 
fervor. But if he has erred in this direction, the pecu- 
liarity of his theme seemed to demand it. 

It was the lot of the subject of this memoir to live 
through times of great public agitation, both in church 
and state. He sustained peculiar relations to the 
educational interests of both ; and in the doctrinal 
discussions and ecclesiastical movements of his era he 
bore a prominent part. It is too early yet for the 
verdict of posterity and of history to be calmly and 
dispassionately rendered, in regard to these great 
events in which he was an actor ; and this fact has 



viii PREFACE. 

embarrassed his biographer, for it has kept him con- 
stantly on his guard, lest any statement should receive 
a partisan tinge. Against this he has watched and 
prayed ; and he ventures to hope that the truthfulness 
and fairness of his record will not be questioned by 
impartial minds. 

The biographer found it impossible to do justice to 
the immediate subject of his memoir, without putting 
on record more of the general history of the times in 
which he lived than usually pertains to the narrative 
of an individual life. Dr. Junkin was so involved in 
some of the most important movements of the period 
in which he lived, that to attempt to isolate his in- 
dividual history from them would destroy at once the 
completeness and the fairness of the narrative. 

The reader will, therefore, find upon the following 
pages much of the history of the Presbyterian Church 
in the United States for the last forty years, with links 
of connection joining it with her preceding history. 
This includes the history of opinion in regard to 
doctrine, order, and missionary organization, and effort. 

It is always a delicate task to write the history of 
opinion, and especially of controversy. The difficulty 
is increased when persons have been involved and 
parties arrayed. If a writer has no opinions of his 
own, he is wholly unfit for the undertaking ; if he has, 
he will be suspected of partiality to his own side. The 
author of this book does not pretend so to have per- 
formed such a difficult task as to place him beyond 
such a suspicion. But of one thing he is conscious, 
that he has aimed at impartiality and fairness of state- 
ment, and that he has endeavored to make charity 
his amanuensis, especially when historic faithful- 



PREFACE. ix 

ness required the record of facts which piety might 
deplore. 

Dr. Junkin had preserved files of his life-long corre- 
spondence, arranged according to date. From these, 
and from documentary sources, the narrative has been 
chiefly drawn. Among his papers was found, after 
his decease, the commencement of a record of his 
personal reminiscences, which was begun soon after 
his exodus from Virginia, at the beginning of the 
civil war ; but the hurry and excitement of the events 
of that fearful struggle called him into activities that 
prevented the prosecution of the record beyond the 
period of his early manhood. It was evidently de- 
signed only for the private reading of his children and 
immediate friends, not for more public use ; and whilst 
it has been of great service in ascertaining the incidents 
of his early life, it is not in a shape to be used except 
in occasional quotations. This use has been made of 
it, and, it is hoped, with advantage to the narrative. 
Where quotations have been made, reference is made 
thereto by the letters " Rem." 

The following is the introduction to these notes, 
from memory, which we insert by way of showing 
their object : 

" REMINISCENCES. 

" At the earnest and oft-repeated request of my dear 
brother, D. X. Junkin, I have, at last, and perhaps too 
late for completion, undertaken to put down a few 
personal recollections ; the perusal of which may 
afford pleasing and mournful interest to my surviving 
friends. An autobiography, begun at the age of 
seventy-one, must necessarily be defective ; especially, 



X PREFACE. 

as in this case, where no diary has been kept. All I 
propose is a record of such events as have left an im- 
pression upon my memory; with such occasional 
remarks as may be useful to my children and my 
children's children. 

" That the record may be blessed to their spiritual 
benefit, is my sincere prayer and ardent hope. 

" GEO. JUNKIN. 

" Price Street, Germantown. 
"Aug. 27, 1861." 

The work has been prepared under the pressure of 
a severe bodily affliction, and amid the many toils, 
and cares, and interruptions incident to a large pastoral 
charge and other public duties. And it is commended 
to the candor and forbearance of the public, with the 
hope and the prayer that it may be the humble instru- 
ment of good. 



LIFE 



DR. GEORGE JUNKIN, 



CHAPTER I. 

Descent — Parentage — Family — Incidents and Traditions in Family History 
— Immigration — American Home — Nativity. 

" /^~\F my family I know but little," said the subject of 
\^J this memoir, in the notes mentioned on the pre- 
ceding page. "Heraldry has not blazoned its name. 
Edmonson's book contains it not." But, if not written 
in books of earthly heraldry, the names of many of his 
ancestors are recorded in a more ancient and enduring 
volume, — "the Lamb's book of life." His lineage was 
of that stalwart, godly, and heroic race, the Puritans 
(Covenanters) of Scotland ; the men and the women who 
braved persecution for Christ's crown and covenant; and, 
despite the curses of the Charleses and the claymores of 
Claverhouse, witnessed so long and so steadfastly for God 
and his truth. 

When the second George was upon the British throne ; 
when Pennsylvania was a nascent province only fifty-six 
years old ; when the Susquehanna flowed through an al- 
most unbroken wilderness, there crossed that river, at 
Harris's Ferry, now Harrisburg, two youthful Scotch-Irish 
immigants — Joseph Junkin and Elizabeth, his wife. They 
had been married a short time before, probably at the place 
where Oxford, Chester County, now stands, having the 
year before arrived from their native country, landing 



12 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

most probably at New Castle, Delaware. A previous in> 
migration of Junkins had halted and acquired lands, upon 
a part of which the town of Oxford now stands. They 
were uncles and cousins_of Joseph, who probably remained 
with them Fora few months ; but soon plunged into the wil- 
derness of what is now Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. 

This Joseph Junkin came from Antrim County, Ireland. 
His father and mother had immigrated to that country 
from Scotland during the persecution under the Stuarts. 
They were Covenanters of the straitest type, and left their 
country for conscience' sake. This migration occurred 
some time before the revolution of 1688. The Junkin 
family had resided near Inverness, and the name is prob- 
ably of Danish origin, and they were, most likely, of the 
number of those adventurers from Denmark which, at an 
early period, took possession of parts of the coast of North 
Britain. 

The paternal grandmother of Dr. Junkin was Elizabeth 
Wallace, also of Scottish parentage ; her mother having 
come from Scotland previous to the siege of London- 
derry; for she was in that city, and, with her family, 
endured the horrors of that siege, successful resistance to 
which gave William of Orange that vantage which estab- 
lished him upon the British throne, — the champion of the 
Protestant religion and the liberties of the world. "She 
heard the booming of many a cannon of the allies of the 
Stuarts ; and she saw from the walls of glorious old Derry 
the smoke of the most important gun ever fired, — the lee- 
gun of the Mountjoy, whose rebound righted the ship, 
broke the boom, relieved the starving city and garrison, 
forced the allies to raise the siege and fall back upon the 
Boyne, where the arms of William and of liberty tri- 
umphed, and completed the glorious revolution of 1688."* 

* Reminiscences. 



BIRTH. 



J 3 



In the estimation of military and political philosophers, 
Derry was the key of that great conflict. 

There is a tradition, derived from this grandmother, dif- 
fering somewhat from that mentioned by Charlotte Eliza- 
beth, and more probable than hers. During the siege, and 
when starvation was nigh accomplishing what French artil- 
lery had failed to do, — when roasted rats had become a 
luxury, — empty barrels were carried in the night to the 
public square (or, rather, the ellipse) of the town, and so 
placed that they could be seen from the enemy's lines, and 
upon their upturned bottoms a little meal or lime was 
spread ; and, in the morning, motions made as if meal was 
being distributed to the people, thus producing the impres- 
sion that abundant provisions had been thrown in. 

Joseph Junkin, Sr. , and Elizabeth Wallace were married 
after arriving in America, and located, as already stated, 
in what is now Cumberland County, where he "took up" 
five hundred acres of land, including the site of the present 
town of Kingston. He might have secured fifty times 
that quantity, for, as his grandson states, ' ' When he built 
his stone house (the second dwelling he erected), he 
might have secured fifty thousand acres of land, which is 
now (1861) valued at one hundred to one hundred and 
fifty dollars per acre. The only expense or limit of ob- 
taining land Avas the office-fees and the cost of surveying. 
He had the funds requisite ; yet, instead of securing so 
large a domain, he invested his ' Spanish milled dollars' in 
a stone house, which stands there to this day, a monument 
of his folly or his wisdom. ' ' This fact he mentions in his 
Reminiscences, as proof of the wonderful changes that 
have taken place in the last one hundred and thirty years. 

Upon this domain the immigrant built a house, in which 

Joseph Junkin, the father of the subject of this memoir, 

was born, a.d. 1750. "I remember this house distinctly. 

It stood over a spring, directly north of the stone tavern 

2 



i 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

which now (1861) stands one-third of a mile east of Kings- 
ton. It was built of hewn logs, covered with shingles. In 
the division of the estate this (east) portion fell to my 
uncle Benjamin, the west moiety to my father. He im- 
proved his share about a.d. 1775, building a stone dwelling 
and other suitable erections, near to a beautiful spring that 
gushed from the hill-side, and still flows on. In that 
dwelling I was born."* 

But the progress of these improvements, as probably also 
the marriage of his father and mother, was delayed by the 
course of public events. The father, previous to his mar- 
riage, performed three campaigns of military service in the 
War of the American Revolution, having volunteered to 
aid in the struggle for his country's independence. In 
1776 and '77 he served against the British, and in 1778 
against the Indians and British on the Upper Juniata fron- 
tier. He assisted in the erection of a fort near to the site 
of Hollidaysburg. In 1776 he served chiefly in New Jersey. 
In 1777 he commanded a company of Cumberland volun- 
teers in the battle of Brandywine . In a letter to his son 
George, while the latter was laboring as a missionary in 
Philadelphia, in 1819, we find an allusion to this, which 
exhibits the spirit of the sire, whilst it throws light upon the 
minuter details of our Revolutionary struggle. 

"The battle of Brandywine was fought on the nth of 
September, 1777, at which I commanded a company. Our 
army was forced to retreat. Great confusion followed, 
both among the troops and in the surrounding country. 
The dead found an asylum, but there was none for the 
wounded. On the 16th a skirmish with the enemy occurred 
near the White Horse Tavern, in Chester County, in which 
I received a musket-ball through my right arm, which shat- 
tered the bone. I could find no place to retire to for cure 
or subsistence. The army was in motion ; I could not go 

* Reminiscences. 



A REVOLUTIONARY INCIDENT. 



r 5 



with them. A horse was procured for me by Captain 
Fisher ; a rope was my bridle ; my knapsack, stuffed with 
hay, was my saddle ; and thus equipped, and wrapped in 
my bloody garments, I arrived at home, a distance of ninety 
miles, in three days. I then took boarding in Carlisle, put 
myself under the care of Dr. Samuel A. McCoskry,* and 
paid all the expenses attendant upon my cure, besides 
which I lost a full year of the prime of my life. I once 
was urged to place myself upon the pension list, under the 
law of Pennsylvania, passed the ioth of March, 1787, but, 
being in good circumstances, declined it." 

The details of his escape from the British lines, within 
which, after he fell, he was left ; the noble conduct of 
"William Smith and his wife, elderly people, and Whig 
Quakers of Chester County, in concealing the wounded 
soldier from British dragoons, sheltering him, feeding him, 
dressing his wounds, and sending him on his way ; his 
mock capture by some American horsemen clad in British 
scarlet ; and the almost overpowering reaction of feeling 
upon discovering the rough jest and finding himself with 
his own regiment, cannot be here detailed. After march- 
ing him as a prisoner some half a mile, and just as he was 
about to make a desperate effort to escape, they pointed 
him down a side road, saying, "Just beyond that woods 
you will find your regiment encamped." 

The narrative formed some of the most striking incidents 
of a prize story, written some years ago by his grand- 
daughter, and was one of those real episodes in military 
history that constitute its romance. And these events in 
the life of the father are alluded to here, only to show that 
the patriotism of the son, so conspicuous during the late 
civil conflict, was not only a. principle, but an inheritance. 

"My mother," says the memorandum already quoted, 
" as I have it from the book, was born on a farm, adjoin- 



Father of Bishop McCoskry, of Michigan. 



1 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

ing what is now Waynesboro', Franklin County, Pennsyl- 
vania. Her father, John Cochran, emigrated from the 
north of Ireland, although also of Scotch descent, and 
located, about 1750, upon that outskirt of civilization next 
to the Indians. His wife, a Baird, came over single, and 
they married soon after. The Cochrans were very strict 
Covenanters. I remember seeing my grandfather Cochran 
but once ; quaint in his attire, and walking with a staff. 
My father often spoke of him as a man of exemplary piety. 
As an example of his religious habit, he said that, in har- 
vest-time, he always had family worship before daylight, 
singing, reading, and prayer, when the family and all hands 
must be present. Then a lunch, with a little whisky, was 
partaken of, always preceded by invocation of the divine 
blessing, then to work awhile before breakfast. Another 
instance of the strictness of these old Covenanters was re- 
lated to me by one who had lived in the Cochran family. 
In walking on Sabbath to worship, over a ridge that 
abounded in whortleberries, the young folks dared not 
gather any, as it was considered a breach of the Sabbath. 
We smile at this, and it may be one extreme, but it con- 
trasts, to our disadvantage, with the other extreme that 
marks this age of Sabbath desecration. 

" From my mother I have often heard the following tale 
of her preservation from a dreadful death. When she was 
about seven or eight years old (1767-8), she was one day 
kept home from school (with another girl, a little older 
than she, who was there going to school) to take care of 
the smaller children, whilst the adults of the family, as- 
sisted by neighbors, joined in the 'flax pulling.' That 
day a party of Indians came upon the school, and mur- 
dered the master, and either killed or carried into captivity 
all the pupils except one. That one was named Archie 
Little, and he reported the sad catastrophe. The master 
was first knocked down, with the tomahawk, then the chil- 
dren, including Little, who was the largest boy in the 
school. He fell under the blow and was scalped, as all 
the rest were. But he recovered, kept still, and heard the 
Indians driving the hatchet into the skulls of such as 
showed any signs of life, whilst, by lying quiet as if dead, 
he escaped a second blow, and lived to tell the sad tale."* 



Rem. 



PARENTAGE. 



i-7 



Thus was the mother of George Junkin providentially 
preserved, in childhood, to be the mother of a large family, 
two of whom became ministers, and four others ruling 
elders, in the church of Christ. The writer of this volume 
once related the above incident to that eminent jurist and 
polished gentleman, the late Hon. George Chambers, of 
Chambersburg, when he replied, " The other little girl, thus 
providentially preserved, was my mother." 

Joseph Junkin, the second, and Eleanor Cochran were 
united in marriage, by the Rev. Alexander Dobbin, D.D., 
May 24th, 1779. The issue of this marriage were fourteen 
children, of whom George was the sixth child, and the 
fourth son. They were, except David, the youngest, born 
in the stone house, erected about 1775, an d which still 
stands a short distance north of Kingston, and, from the 
slope of the ridge, overlooks that valley of teeming fruit- 
fulness and almost peerless beauty. There, on the 1st day 
of November, a.d. 1790, the subject of this memoir was 
born. 



CHAPTER II. 

Birthplace Influences — -Family History — Refugees — Frontiersmen — Indian 
Depredations — Quaker Policy — "The Paxton Boys." 

WITH our American prejudices against aristocracy, 
and our disregard of ancestry, we are in danger of 
underestimating many of the most important influences that 
affect the formation of character. This is unphilosophical. 
If history and biography are of any value at all, it is for the 
lessons they impart. But if the events which form their 
staple are effects without causes, or if the record ignores 
the causes that produced the results, it is valueless as a 
guide in future progress. If the Scripture guarantee, 
"train up a child in the way he should go, and when he 
is old he will not depart from it," is reliable, then is it 
important to trace the phenomena of individual character 
and conduct to the surroundings of childhood, and to the 
training which he received, just as we trace other effects 
to their causes. And, without a process of this kind, the 
true philosophy of history can never be unfolded. 

Dr. Junkin himself was accustomed to attribute much 
of what he was, and what he was enabled to do for God 
and his generation, to early home influences, and especially 
to a mother's love, piety, and faithfulness, whilst he as- 
cribed all, ultimately, to God. With this thought in view, 
a few additional lines concerning his parentage, family, and 
the surroundings of his birthplace will not be deemed 
unnecessary. 

We have seen that his ancestry, both paternal and mater- 
nal, were Puritan ; for the Covenanters were genuine Puri- 
tans, and the limitation of this term to the early settlers 
(18) 



FAMIL Y HISTOR Y. 



19 



of New England is an unauthorized restriction. His an- 
cestors had passed through the purifying process of perse- 
cution, so well adapted to beget loyalty to principle. 
Taught in the stern school of revolution, in the fatherland, 
the Scotch-Irish immigrants brought to the forests of the 
American frontier a character peculiarly adapted to such a 
field of exertion. And the field itself was well adapted to 
develop all the better elements of that character. In re- 
gard to men, self-reliant, independent, liberty-loving ; yet 
in regard to God, self-renouncing, dependent, conscien- 
tious, and reverential ; there was in the combination the 
choicest elements of energy and success. The great dogma 
of Calvinism, that means have efficacy because God hath de- 
creed it, formed the very chain in the web of their creed. 
The war-cry of the hero of Marston Moor, "Trust in the 
Lord, and depend on your pikes," was by them applied 
alike to the arts of peace and to the martial defence of 
their frontier homes, and it begat energy in both. The 
Bible, the Confession of Faith, and the catechisms, formed 
the staple of their reading and their thought, the Psalms 
of David and Asaph their song. With these, and the 
voice of family prayer, their cabins were vocal. The itin- 
erant missionary from Scotland or Ulster preached to them, 
in familiar dialect, the gospel of God's grace; first in pri- 
vate dwellings, or in the " tent" beneath the forest's shades, 
beside some gushing spring, and afterwards in the rude log 
structures, which answered the double purpose of school- 
house and sanctuary. 

Coming, as most of. them did, from the rural districts 
of the " old country," they sought the frontier, where lands 
were to be had for the "taking up," with small fees for 
records and surveying. And hence it came to pass that 
the Scotch-Irish, with sometimes a small admixture of 
Germans, became the frontiersmen of many of the colonies, 
especially of Pennsylvania and Virginia. There they made 



2 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

homes for themselves, with the axe and the mattock, which 
they often were compelled to defend, against a savage foe, 
with their rifles. Their entire surroundings called for great 
exertion, indomitable courage, and unfailing patience. 
The struggle was for bread, for education, and for religion ; 
and it taxed all their powers, and, by taxing, developed 
them. To create a civilization in the forest, distant from 
all facilities of improvement, might well have made a strong 
race out of a feeble one. But, when men of godly prin- 
ciples and high resolve, men descended from a hardy and 
energetic ancestry, were placed in circumstances so favor- 
able to the development of the nobler attributes of human- 
ity, we need not wonder that a high style of manhood 
resulted, and a desirable condition of society. 

It is true, there were countervailing tendencies. The 
very energy and fondness for adventure, which such a state 
of things fostered, tended to unsettle some minds, make 
them restless in their homes, and lead them to seek, in the 
remoter frontier, that occupation and excitement which 
were not found in the older settlements. It was, accord- 
ingly, not a rare occurrence for some, after having sub- 
dued the forest and made improvements, to "sell out" to 
later comers, and plunge farther into the wilderness in 
search of new homes and new adventure. 

This accounts for the fact, that, in the early settlements 
of the middle colonies, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians 
formed the bulk of the frontiersmen who subdued the forest 
and battled with the savage. 

And, in Pennsylvania, they did the latter with very 
little aid from the government. They fought the bat- 
tles with their own strong arms, their own rifles, ammu- 
nition, and provisions. The colonial government of Penn- 
sylvania was, for a long time, under the control of ''the 
people called Quakers," that sect having a large and steady 
majority in the colonial assembly. Their peace principles, 



INDIAN DEPREDATIONS. 21 

which were part of their religious creed, forbade them 
either to bear arms themselves, or to aid and abet war of 
any kind, and they would not vote war subsidies. The 
policy inaugurated by Penn, of not only buying the land 
from the Indians, but of buying them off from hostilities 
by presents, was maintained, until the latter became injuri- 
ous and defeated its own end. The Indians became more 
and more exorbitant in their demands, and would commit 
atrocious barbarities upon the frontier inhabitants, not 
only for purposes of vengeance and plunder, but also with 
the expectation that the government would buy a peace 
with still more liberal presents. 

So far was this system carried, that the frontiersmen be- 
gan to look upon these gratuities of the colonial govern- 
ment as bribes to the savages to commit more murders 
and depredations. Hence arose a state of exasperated 
feeling among the frontier settlements against both the gov- 
ernment and the savages, which resulted in some unhappy 
outbreaks. It was this exasperation that prompted "the 
Paxton Boys" to the unjustifiable slaughter of the Cones- 
toga Indians, in the Lancaster Jail, in 1763, and to march 
to Philadelphia, to the great consternation of the inhabit- 
ants of that peace-loving city. This unlawful enterprise 
was rashly undertaken by some young hot-headed and irre- 
sponsible frontiersmen, in what is now Dauphin County, 
with a few from what are now York and Cumberland, but 
was resisted by the older and more considerate inhabitants. 
The perpetrators were mostly young men who had lost 
kindred or neighbors by the murderous incursions of the 
savages, and who had conceived that indiscriminate hatred 
against the Indians which was always too rife upon the 
border. They suspected the Conestoga Indians (perhaps 
unjustly) of giving information to the wild Indians where 
and when to strike. They were exasperated that a gov- 
ernment which taxed them, and which they defended with 



22 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

their arms, would do nothing to protect their homes ; and 
this indignant feeling broke out, and resulted in the un- 
fortunate and excuseless massacre of people probably- 
innocent. 

Great efforts were made by those in the interests of the 
Quaker legislature to impute to the whole Presbyterian 
population of the frontier the blame of this atrocious act ; 
but the letter of the Rev. John Elder, pastor of Paxton 
and Derry, to Governor John Penn, and the governor's 
answer to him, completely prove the injustice of such a 
charge.* 

The exciting incidents above mentioned took place when 
Joseph Junkin (father of the Doctor) was in his thirteenth 
year; and although neither he nor any of his family were 
participants, they form part of the history of the commu- 
nity in which he was reared, and amid which his childhood 
was passed. Often did the family leave their dwelling at 
evening, and pass the night in the cornfield or the "flax- 
patch," for fear of assault by the savage foe. When in his 
sixth year (1755), during the French and Indian War, his 
parents escaped, with their family, from savage barbarities, 
and fled to Chester County, where they abode for a season 
with their relatives. The first night after their flignt they 
found refuge in a "block-house," on Paxton Creek, near 
to the place where Harrisburg now stands. That same 
night, a Mr. Graham, with his family, took refuge in the 
same wooden fortress. He was the father of the Rev. 
William Graham, a minister of the gospel and the founder 
of Washington College, Lexington, Va., of which college 
the son (George) of his fellow-refugee afterwards became 
president. From that college that son himself became a 
refugee, when the civil war began in 1861. 

In 1778 the Upper Susquehanna was overrun by the 

* See Archives of Pa., vol. iv. pp. 148, 153. 



AN INCIDENT. 



2 3 



Indians in British pay, and the Wyoming massacre oc- 
curred. The settlers fled for refuge to the older settle- 
ments. A family named Montgomery found refuge in the 
house of Dr. Junkin's father. " He was the father," says 
Dr. J., "of my lamented friend and helper in good works, 
the late noble-hearted General Daniel Montgomery, of 
Danville, Pa., with whom, in after-years, I took sweet 
counsel. This incident I had from the general himself in 
the first years of our acquaintance." 

He records in his Reminiscences several incidents of the 
early life of his parents, as connected with the first years 
of the War of Independence. But, although they illus- 
trate the condition and history of those times, they are not 
necessarily connected with the object of this volume, and 
are therefore not introduced. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that "Tories," as the ad- 
herents of the king were called, were rarely found among 
the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. They were proverbial for 
their zeal in the cause of Independence. The father of 
Dr. Junkin has left on record some incidents of which he 
was personally cognizant just before he marched to New 
Jersey in 1776. One occurred at Carlisle previous to the 
Declaration of Independence, but after the subject had 
been proposed in Congress. A large number of the inhab- 
itants of Cumberland Valley had congregated at Carlisle to 
confer about public affairs. They were assembled in the 
public square, and it was proposed to have an expression 
of public sentiment upon the subject. An eminent lawyer 

of the place, Mr. , made a lengthy address, setting 

forth the folly and the madness of the attempt to become 
independent of Great Britain. He portrayed the vast 
wealth and military power of Great Britain in contrast with 
the poverty, weakness, and want of military resources of the 
colonies. He urged them to seek nothing beyond a reason- 
able redress of grievances, and assured them that an attempt 



24 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

at independence would result only in disaster and ruin to 
the colonies. When he had closed, another lawyer, a Mr. 
Wm. Lyon, made a short address, and proposed that all 
who favored independence should move to the north side 
of the square, and those who opposed it, to the south. The 
great mass of the people, our father with them, promptly 
moved to the north side ; a few, three or four, moved 
neither way ; but none went to the south side. 

Shortly after this there was a battalion drill in the 
vicinity of Silver's Spring, at which nearly all the people 
of the lower valley, that were not in the army, were present. 
Whilst the parade was in progress, and the men were en- 
gaged in putting green branches in their hats as a token 
that they were willing to volunteer, a courier rode along, 
bringing the tidings that independence had been declared 
three days before at Philadelphia, and carrying a hand-bill 
announcing the declaration. It was read to the multitude, 
and there ratified unanimously and with acclamation, and 
a large company of volunteers organized on the spot. Such 
was the spirit of old Cumberland at that trying time. 

The facilities for education in a frontier settlement were, 
of course, meagre ; and yet the Presbyterians, whatever 
else they lacked, would provide schools. Of course their 
school-houses, like their dwellings, were at first but rude 
cabins, such as we have seen the mother attended ; but the 
teachers were often persons of mature education ; and if 
the books and other appliances were few and simple, the 
drill was often more thorough than it now is. The parents, 
who had been taught in the schools of the mother country, 
were also effective teachers ; and around the blazing fires 
of home, in the long winter evenings, imparted to their 
children the learning they had acquired in their youth. 
With such meagre advantages, Dr. Junkin's parents ac- 
quired an education such as is even yet deemed respect- 
able. The father, by diligence in study out of the hours 



PARENTAL PIETY. 



25 



of labor, made himself a very accurate English scholar. 
He was fond of exact science, made considerable progress 
in mathematics and natural philosophy, wrote with vigor 
and grammatical correctness, and was an accurate practical 
land surveyor. He was a man of unusual natural force and 
perspicuity of mind ; reasoned with strength, and wrote in 
a style plain, but accurate and vigorous, and was rather 
fond of discussion. Accustomed to think, and fond of 
conversation, he could not but impress upon his children 
habits of thought, especially upon the one (George) who, 
more, perhaps, than any other, inherited the father's mas- 
sive mental structure. 

Both parents had been thoroughly instructed in the doc- 
trines of the Bible and of the Westminster Symbols, and 
both, from early life, were professors of religion. The 
father grasped the doctrines with a clearness and a vigor 
that made him a formidable disputant ; and the type of his 
religion, whilst it lacked not tenderness and humility, was 
more marked by intellectual force than by devotional fervor. 
The mother's, on the other hand, whilst also intelligent, 
was characterized by unusual fervor of devotion and prac- 
tical Christian earnestness. Equally firm in the faith with 
her husband, she excelled him in earnest and conscientious 
efforts to apply its principles in everyday duties. She was, 
indeed, a woman of eminent godliness. She taught her 
children to do everything in reference to God and upon 
religious principle ; and she trained them not only in the 
preceptive, but in the practical also. 

In every community in which she resided she was remark- 
able as a successful peace-maker, and earned the beatitude 
attached to that character. Her system was quiet, but 
effective. If she knew of alienation and strife between 
neighbors or church-members, especially if females, she 
would seek interviews with them separately. She would 
converse with one of the. hostile parties about the other, 
3 



2 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

aiming with skill and tact to elicit some favorable expres- 
sion concerning the absent. This she would repeat to the 
other, keeping to herself any unkind thing that might have 
been said. This would bring out some kind expression in 
turn, "which she would take occasion to repeat, thus gradu- 
ally "slaying the enmity." And when, by this process, 
she had prepared the way, she would contrive an interview, 
often at her own tea-table, where the reconciliation would 
be perfected. 

Such, in a religious point of view, were the parents of 
George Junkin. Of Covenanter stock, they early became 
members of that (the Reformed Presbyterian) church ; and 
when, in 1782, that church united with the "Associate 
Presbyterian Synod," forming the "Associate Reformed 
Church of North America," they joined in the union, and 
for many years the father was a prominent ruling elder in 
that body. Referred to the influence of such a parentage, 
in connection with later surroundings, it is not difficult to 
account for the peculiarities of Dr. Junkin's religious char- 
acter, strength and clearness of intellectual perceptions, 
fervor of devotion, and earnest practicalness. He himself 
often spoke of his maternal training and pious influence 
with deeply grateful and reverential feelings. 

"My father and mother had fourteen children: Eliza- 
beth, Eleanor, Joseph, who died young, John, Joseph, 
George, William, who died in childhood, Mary and Agnes, 
twins, Benjamin, one unnamed, who died in infancy, Wil- 
liam Findley, Matthew Oliver, and David. All were born 
in the same old stone mansion, already described, except 
the last named, who was born at Hope Mills, in Mercer 
County. Eleven of them attained adult life, married, and 
all raised families, except the oldest daughter, Elizabeth, 
who, with her first child, died shortly after its birth."* 

Elizabeth was the wife of the Hon. John Findley, of 
Mercer County ; Eleanor, the wife of the Hon. Walter 

* Rem. 



FA MIL Y. 



27 



Oliver, for many years a member of the State legislature ; 
Mary, the wife of the Rev. George Buchanan, pastor for 
nearly fifty years of the A. R. Church of Steubenville, 
Ohio ; and Agnes was the wife of the Rev. James Gallo- 
way, first pastor of Mercer, and she afterwards married 
Hugh Bingham, Esq., father of the Hon. John A. Bingham. 
Of the immediate family of Joseph Junkin, Senior, in- 
cluding sons-in-law and grandsons, fifteen were ministers 
of the gospel and twenty-one ruling elders in the church, — 
in all thirty-six office-bearers in Presbyterian churches. Of 
these, ten ministers and ten elders still live. The others 
have fallen asleep. 



CHAPTER III. 

"Widow Junkin's Tent" — Early Missionaries of Cumberland Valley — 
Churches — Baptism — A. R. Church formed — Early Religious Instruc- 
tion — Confidence in God's Covenant — Schools and Teachers — Romance 
— Recollections of Early Preachers. 

JOSEPH JUNKIN, the grandfather of the Doctor, died in 
1777, before the marriage of Joseph, the second, but 
his wife Elizabeth survived until 1796. The first place of 
holding public worship in the vicinity was upon her estate 
in the woods. "It was known from my earliest memory," 
says Dr. J. in his Reminiscences, "as 'Widow Junkin's 
tent,' and stood three hundred yards from the dwelling 
first erected by my grandfather. About the dawn of my 
memory that ' tent' was removed one mile west, to James 
Bell's place. In 'Bell's tent' I have often heard Dr. Black, 
Dr. Culbertson and others of the old Covenanters, preach. 
That tent (a simple stand or dais, with a shelter for the 
minister, and a board on which to lay the Bible) stood, 
braced up against a large black-oak tree, more than forty- 
five years. When I passed the place last May (1861) it was 
gone ; and the Bells, Junkins, and all the worshippers are 
gone." 

The Dr. Culbertson, or, rather, Cuthbertson, above men- 
tioned, was a Scotsman of eminent piety and devotedness. 
He landed at New Castle, Delaware, in 1744, and imme- 
diately began a series of missionary journeys and toils that 
extended until near the close of the century (1799). 

" I often have heard my parents speak of Doctor Clark, 
a Covenanter minister, who traversed the middle and 
southern colonies as a missionary. He was a man of great 
(28) 



FIRST RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTIONS. 



29 



talents, learning, piety, and zeal. His labors were sig- 
nally blessed in many places. 

" Mr. Culbertson joined in the Union of 1782, and was 
pastor of the A. R. Church of Big Spring, Newville. The 
Rev. Dr. Alexander Dobbin, of Adams County, adhered to 
the same body, and ministered at Marsh Creek, where he 
conducted a grammar-school, at which many eminent men 
were trained. He also served a congregation on Antietam 
Creek, near where my mother was born. It was at one of 
the sacramental services which he administered there that 
my parents dedicated me to God in the ordinance of bap- 
tism, which Dr. Dobbin administered."* 

Of his early religious instructions, and of his first schools 
and teachers, we gather the following from his Reminis- 
cences : 

" I have no recollection as to the first religious instruc- 
tions I received and the early influence of family wor- 
ship. But from my mother's teachings of those younger 
than myself, which do come within the scope of my memory, 
I infer what she had done for me, beyond the range of 
memory. This ought to be the case with all family train- 
ing. It was careful, constant, kind, though firm, and it 
was Christian. Blessed is that family that is so trained. 
It cannot be that it should fail to rear a godly seed. There 
stands the covenant promise, 'I will be a God to thee and 
to thy seed after thee.' It cannot fail, for God is faithful." 

And this high estimate of the value of godly training in 
the family, and the faithfulness of God's covenant, drawn 
as it was from his own experience, from observation, and 
from the Holy Word, grew upon him through all his life, 
and was often expressed in his preaching and his writings. 
He was in the habit of teaching that parental faithfulness 
and care, with devout prayer, could (instrumentally) trans- 
mit to offspring the piety pledged in the covenant of grace, 
and the heavenly inheritance connected with it, with greater 



* Rem. 



3 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

certainty than the worldly estate which they might design 
to bequeath to them. 

"I cannot date precisely my first school days. They 
must have been in my sixth or seventh year. The school- 
house to which my older brothers went was two and a half 
miles from our home, but, before I commenced, my father 
had succeeded in having one built within one and a half 
miles east of us, on the summit of the ridge. It was a 
hewn log structure, and very respectable and comfortable. 
The windows were made by cutting out about ten feet of a 
log on each side, and inserting a low, narrow sash to fill 
the opening. The desks were attached firmly to the wall, 
so that the faces of the pupils were towards this long, low 
window when writing, and the smaller children seated in the 
central parts of the room. I doubt whether much improve- 
ment has yet been made upon this simple and convenient 
arrangement. The site of our school-house was extremely 
pleasant. A beautiful open grove of forest trees in the 
rear, and a magnificent view southward over the valley, 
terminated only by the peaks of the 'Blue Ridge.' In the 
intermediate space lay the broad rolling plain of the Cum- 
berland Valley, then called 'The Barrens,' because desti- 
tute of timber, but now esteemed soil of great fertility. 
There I received all my 'schooling' until I entered the 
preparatory department of Jefferson College in 1809. 

"My first schoolmaster was William Jamieson, a lame 
man, who walked with a crutch and staff; and many a time 
I have run races with him, in going home from or coming 
to school. He often outran me, hopping on his three 
legs. It was then the custom for the teacher to board 
round among the pupils, and, though often disagreeable 
to him, it had its advantages. If he was an agreeable person 
(and if not he ought not to be in the office), he learned the 
habits of the homes, could hint useful things to the parents, 
become familiar with all, and it tended to permanency. 
We were very ambitious to get 'Master Jamieson' home 
with us, and he often had difficulty in deciding between our 
claims. He was a beautiful penman, a pretty good teacher, 
was truly benevolent, and therefore greatly beloved. He 
had great administrative ability; knew how to obey Solo- 
mon in the use of the rod, though erring rather on the side 



EARLY TEACHERS. 3I 

of lenity. He was jocose without descending to familiarity. 
He continued our teacher for many years. 

" My next schoolmaster was an Irishman named Hen- 
derson, a good mathematician. Then a Yankee — Augustus 
Searl — somewhat of a classic, teaching Latin to one or two 
of the boys. He occasionally got drunk, and then he 
always closed the school with prayer — never when sober. 
Next to him came James Smith, a Scot, who taught two 
years. He was a man of ability. 

" My next teacher was Andrew Caruthers, whose story 
was connected with one of the tragedies of the valley. 
He was born in our neighborhood, and had learned the 
trade of a carpenter. During one of his visits to his 
family, the food of the household was mixed with arsenic, 
by a young woman who lived in the family, named Sarah 
Clark. Her object was to destroy one of the daughters, 
who, she thought, stood between her and the affections of 
J. D., whom she herself loved. She succeeded in murder- 
ing part of the family, and was afterwards executed for the 
crime at Carlisle. Andrew Caruthers was rendered decrepit 
by the poison, and, no longer able to work, began study 
and entered Dickinson College. During his college course 
he left college and taught, to obtain means, and thus be- 
came my teacher. He afterwards became eminent as a 
lawyer and a judge, and was distinguished as a law in- 
structor. His hands were so distorted by the poison that 
he could not make pens in his school, and he devolved this 
work chiefly upon me, and he paid me richly by special 
attentions. It was he who put it into my father's mind to 
give me a college education. My last schoolmaster was 
James Smith, of Carlisle. Diligent and faithful, but not 
very efficient."* 

Thus did his mind, in old age, recall with minuteness 
and affection the names and the peculiarities of his early 
teachers, and, with a detail that we need not here copy, 
he proceeds to describe the things taught, the modes of 
teaching, the few school-books used, the systems of reward, 



32 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

the "trapping," and other modes of exciting emulation in 
the learners, together with incidents that would not interest 
the general reader, but all of which illustrate the early- 
rise in his mind of that which proved the business, we 
might say the passion, of his life — education — the develop- 
ment and culture of the mind. " The Bible was the chief 
reading book. The Catechism was universally taught ; 
usually one question was required of every pupil each 
morning, and a general recitation of it the last hour of 
the week." 

He describes, also, the games of the playground, by 
which amusement was sought and physical development 
promoted ; and they are much the same as those prevailing 
among our youth of the present day. The discipline of 
the school, with rod, rule, rebuke, report at home, and 
occasionally the fool's-cap, or the fool's-corner, are re- 
called, as well as some scenes in which the boys showed 
themselves to be the fathers of the men. 

"About 1798, political excitement ran high in the coun- 
try, and was rife in the school. Between Federalists and 
anti-Federalists, in the school, the strife was very virulent. 
Fists, sticks, and snowballs sometimes were employed to 
enforce arguments. The Aikens and Walkers (of which 
family Hon. Robert J. Walker was one) were violent Fed- 
erals, whilst the Loudons and Junkins were anti-Federals. 
The fights would break out at the close of school, and 
Master Jamieson was often not able to quell them. On one 
of these occasions I had the only fisticuff battle of my 
life, in my eighth year. The tyg boys, afraid to engage 
themselves, managed to urge on Bill Aiken, a full cousin 
of Robert J. Walker, and myself to do battle. It was not 
of long continuance. I got my antagonist down, and 
banged anti-federalism (republicanism, as it began to be 
called) into him ad posterior em, until he cried 'Enough.' 
Then the Republican boys made the welkin ring with 
shouts of victory, and the parties drew off to nurse their 
wrath and meet another day. I have lost sight of my 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOL. 



33 



friend and antagonist, Aiken ; if alive, he is now seventy- 
two years old."* 

"In the summer of 1799, my father lived on a farm 
which he owned, two miles east of Newville, having re- 
moved to it for the purpose of making improvements, hav- 
ing meanwhile leased the homestead at Kingston. My 
memory is crowded with incidents of that summer, pleas- 
ant to recall, but not worthy of special record 

That summer I went to school to William McKean, in a 
log schoolhouse, near to one Myers' house, a tenant of Mr. 
Leiper's. Joseph Ritner was then Myers' hired boy, and 
one of Leiper's girls became his wife. I saw them, many 
years afterwards, in Harrisburg, when he (Ritner) was 
governor of Pennsylvania. . . . My parents belonged 
to the A. R. Church at Newville, of which, at that time, 
the Rev. James McConnel, a 'United Irishman,' was 
pastor. He had some imagination, considerable flow of 
language, much self-possession, and was orthodox, but big- 
oted. These opinions of him are the result of subsequent 
knowledge, not of my observations at the time. My only 
recollections of him, as he then was, are that he was tedi- 
ous and confused. He never won my attention, or made 
me in the least the wiser. But oh! his 'fourth places,' 
and 'fifth places,' and his ' last places,' of which last he 
had often many in the same discourse, — I remember what 
weariness they produced. 

"And yet, towards the last of that summer, my mind 
was very much exercised in regard to heaven and hell, and 
all that relates to eternity. But I cannot connect any of 
my mental exercises with the pastor's sermons. He was 
assisted at a sacramental service, on one occasion, by the 
Rev. James Walker, also an Irishman. His text and ser- 
mon I remember, 'Put on the whole armor of God, etc' 
It was not the instrument of my awakening, but aided me 
in my serious impressions. His appearance I can dis- 
tinctly recall. He was of grave and solemn demeanor, 
whilst the pastor was too jovial to accomplish much 
good."f 

It was during this summer, and the next winter, that the 

* Rem. f Rem. 



34 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

mental process which he thinks resulted in his spiritual 
change was experienced. He records this with that sim- 
plicity which was an element of his character, and with 
that microscopic detail which might be expected of one 
accustomed to a careful observing of the connection be- 
tween cause and effect. In his child-experience was real- 
ized the fact, that God often causes " the wrath of man to 
praise him." It not unfrequently happens that the Lord 
employs some outbreak of natural depravity, as the means 
of showing to his chosen ones the plague of their own 
hearts, with a view to convincing them of sin. It was so 
with him, as he naively tells : 

"When at school one day I became greatly distressed by 
a trifling loss (a pocket brass inkstand of my brother 
John's), and, whilst weeping for this cause, my memory re- 
called and placed at the bar of conscience a wicked act 
I had long before committed against my sister Elizabeth, 
who now lived far away, in Mercer County, having married 
and emigrated thither. The act was done before her mar- 
riage; when, on one occasion, she restrained me in some 
trifle, I became furious, and threw in her face some bread 
I was eating at the time. Months had elapsed; but this 
unkind treatment of my dear, and now distant, sister seemed 
to plant a dagger in my heart, and this sorrow absorbed 
the other, and made me feel very remorseful. A sense of 
sin was awakened in my heart that continued to grow 
deeper from time to time. Shortly after this, one night, 
there was a tremendous storm of thunder, lightning, and 
rain. The teeming of the rain upon the roof, the flash of 
the lightning, and the roar of heaven's dread artillery, 
brought the ideas of death and eternity vividly before me. 
My cruel treatment of my absent sister, and other sins, 
came rushing upon my heart. I lay long awake, fearing, 
trembling, weeping, and praying. I have never felt such 
deep and painful emotions of the kind as that night. My 
conscience seconded all these, and made me taste the bit- 
terness of sin. 

"Late in November, my uncle, William Findley (who 
for twenty-two consecutive years represented the Westmore- 



MATERNAL INFLUENCE. 



35 



land district in Congress, and who won the sobriquet of 
'the Chronicler of Congress'), came to. my father's, on his 
way to Philadelphia, where that body then sat. His con- 
versation, and especially his singing and prayers, were 
comfortable to me. Later still, and after we had returned 
to the old homestead below Carlisle, my sister, Elizabeth 
Findley, returned from the West to spend the winter and 
encounter the first perils of maternity under her mother's 
care. One day, after the birth of her child, Dr. Mc- 
Coskry, as he was leaving the house after a professional 
call, said, very sorrowfully, 'It is all over with her; she is 
already in the agonies of death.' Oh, how this riveted 
the convictions of the last few months ! I went out to the 
pond, behind the spring-house, and lay down on my face 
upon the clean slate gravel, and wept, and prayed, and 
prayed and wept, as I had never done before. And now, 
(1861), at the distance of sixty-two years, I am not certain 
but that this was the time of my spiritual birth." (This 
was in his tenth year.) " I made no profession of religion 
for twelve years afterwards ; but from that day my con- 
science has never been beaten down, but has controlled my 
conduct. It has never, except momentarily, failed to se- 
cure obedience, and to keep me in a prayerful frame. I 
never used profane language in my life, but, from the time 
just specified, have felt a peculiar shrinking from it, and, 
indeed, from all sinful outbreakings. Much of this is due 
to education under my mother's training and prayers, all 
efficiently to the grace of God. I never heard a profane 
oath from one of her children, nor from any of the name. 

Now these things are not mentioned by 

way of boasting, but as an expression of gratitude to God, 
for giving me such parents, and especially such a mother, 
and for blessing her prayers and efforts in educating my 
conscience, and bringing down the Holy Spirit to sanctify 
my heart and restrain my naturally quick and violent 
temper. When I look back upon the temptations to pro- 
fanity by men and boys all around me, I cannot account 
for the escape of myself and brothers except on this ground. 
God interposed, and, by home restraints, saved us."* 



CHAPTER IV. 

Causes of Removal to the West — Emigration — Incidents of Journey — 
Hope Mills — Three Years at that Place — Their Influence upon his Fu- 
ture — Ministers at Mercer — Rev. Samuel Tait — Rev. Campbell. 

" \T OTHING occurs to my memory worthy of note 
J^^ until 1804. That year, for the first, I made 'a 
hand' at the sickle in my father's harvesting. The sickle, 
in those days, was the chief instrument for cutting grain. 
The fields were laid out in ' lands' of eight feet wide, and 
two hands took 'a land,' and must always clean up the 
right hand furrow; hence my partner, by doing a little 
more than his share, made a hand of me. 

" Whisky was always used in harvest, yet I never saw a 
man drunk on my father's farm. He was a moderate 
drinker at harvest for more than seventy years, and yet 
never was intoxicated, so far as I ever saw or heard of. 
Fixed principle only saved him. 

"The summer and autumn of 1804 were marked by 
sickness (fever and ague) prevailing all through the Cum- 
berland Valley. Our entire family, twelve, were taken. I 
the last one taken down. It was probably this, together 
with the wish of getting land for all his children, that led 
my father to meditate a removal to the west end of the 
State. Wayne's victory over the Indians, in the battle of 
the Maumee, and the subsequent treaty with them (1798), 
had opened to settlement the large district that lies between 
the Ohio and the lake, and the Alleghany and the Ohio 
line, a district of great beauty, and possessing many re- 
sources of wealth. To the county of Mercer, in that region, 
my brother-in-law, John Findley, had migrated (from West- 
moreland), in 1799, an d niy father made purchase of large 
tracts of land in and after 1800. In the fall of 1805, my 
two older brothers, John and Joseph, were detailed and 
sent to improve the Hope farm, two and a half miles south 
of the town of Mercer. This was before he sold the home- 
(36) 



INCIDENTS OF JOURNEY. 37 

stead in Cumberland. Next year he sold it, and, on the 
15th of April, 1806, set out with his family for Mercer 
County. 

" It was a tedious, and sometimes perilous, journey, for 
the road over the Alleghany Mountains was of the most 
primitive and impracticable kind. A week brought us to 
Mr. Findley's, in Westmoreland. The present town of 
Latrobe occupies part of his estate. There we remained 
over Sabbath and Monday. At Pittsburg we had to lighten 
our wagons by leaving part of their loads, for the road to 
Mercer was new, through deep forests, and over steep hills. 
At the ferry-house, opposite Pittsburg, at what is now the 
foot of Federal Street, Alleghany, my father found an old 
Scotch-Irishman, named Wm. Robinson, who used to 
thrash rye for my father in Cumberland. He owned the 
ferry and the farm, on which the central parts of Alleghany 
City now stand, and urged my father to buy it, offering all, 
from the second bank to the foot of the great hill, for four 
thousand dollars. Nor was my father ignorant of the pros- 
pective value of the property. I heard him remark, ' There 
will one day be the great city, and Pittsburg will be a small 
town of stores and shops.' He had money on hand to 
make the purchase, but Mr. Findley dissuaded him. Had 
he made that purchase it might have ruined his children, 
for he would have become very rich. 

" Our progress was so slow that the next Sabbath was 
spent at the house of a Mr. Sample, a Cumberland family 
that lived at the mouth of Girty's Run, and we only arrived 
at Hope farm on the 1st of May. Here, for a season, we 
lived in a somewhat spacious 'cabin,' until the large man- 
sion-house, still standing, was erected. It was a dense 
cabin population ; for, besides our own large family, we 
had many men employed in building dam, mills, mansion- 
house, and other improvements. Our master millwright 
was Joseph Smith, Esq. , father of the Rev. Dr. Joseph T. 
Smith, of Baltimore. Early in the autumn we entered the 
large house, and left the cabin to the horses. 

"Nothing specially worthy of record occurred during 
the ensuing three years that I remained at home before 
going to college. I worked at all kinds of labor — carpen- 
try, cabinet-making, farming, sawing lumber, grinding 
grain, and wool-carding. Just before going to college, I 
4 



3 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

made a neat cherry cradle for my brother David, then a 
baby. . . . The first summer of our sojourn, I killed 
seventeen rattlesnakes."* 

Further details of the formation of the new home at 
"Hope Mills," and of the trials incident thereto, are 
given in his notes ; but, whilst interesting to his family and 
intimate friends, they would not prove so much so to the 
general reader. The foregoing has been transcribed because 
it throws light upon the development of those remarkable 
powers, physical, moral, and intellectual, which made Dr. 
Junkin the man he was. The sketches which he has given 
of his youth, graphic, simple, and unaffected as they are, 
enable us to account for the remarkable constitution of his 
manhood, especially for that "mens sana in corpore sano" 
which enabled him to do such a life-work as we hope to 
record. His triune constitution, "body, soul, and spirit," 
was finely, proportionately, and vigorously developed by 
the surroundings and employments of his earlier life. His 
bodily frame, although below medium height, was massive, 
firmly knit, and wondrously muscular. Energy and en- 
durance pervaded every joint, nerve, and fibre. Quick- 
ness of mechanical perception, and an intuitive prompt- 
ness to apply the mechanical powers, gave efficacy to his 
physical exertions. An early fondness for inquiring after 
the reasons of things was fostered both by paternal example 
and by his daily employments. The very meagreness of 
his opportunities and appliances of education but stimulated 
a mind like his to higher exertion, whilst the entire process 
of development went on amid domestic, social, and church 
influences, all tending to produce a consecration of all his 
powers to the higher and holier spheres of human duty and 
exertion. 

During these three years the new homestead at Hope 



MINISTERS AT MERCER. 



39 



Mills was founded, the farm opened, a flouring-mill, the 
largest in the country, and with the first set of French burr 
millstones north of the Ohio, erected, carding-machines, a 
fulling and cloth-dressing mill established, the first in the 
county, and other improvements made. In all this the 
youth of sixteen to nineteen bore a full share, and, next to 
the oldest brother, was probably the most efficient. Mean- 
time, his efforts at self-improvement were not relaxed, nor 
"the great concern" neglected. 

" During these years," continue the Reminiscences, " the 
Rev. Samuel Tait was the Presbyterian minister in Mercer 
and vicinity, the first that was settled there, having come 
in 1800. I seldom heard him, as our family was connected 
with the Associate Reformed body. He was zealous, 
warm-hearted, often wept whilst preaching, had little edu- 
cation, and less logic, but was earnest and useful. His 
preaching failed to make the gospel plan clearly under- 
stood, and his reproofs often had a hardening influence. 
The Associate (seceders), the Reformed Presbyterians 
(Covenanters), and the A. R. Church had frequent sup- 
plies, and Mr. T. sometimes made hard allusions to them ; 
but I now think his ministrations were more useful than 
theirs, which were too dryly doctrinal, and inclined to Anti- 
nomianism." 

George Junkin had now passed his eighteenth year, and, 
if his cherished wish to obtain a liberal education was ever 
to be gratified, steps looking thereto must soon be taken. 
The father, who had once, upon Mr. Caruther's suggestion, 
formed the purpose of sending him to college, seems to 
have somewhat faltered in regard to the purpose. But the 
mother, who, like Hannah, had given him in her heart .and 
her prayers to the Lord, continued steadfast in her wish to 
have him educated. She prevailed, and arrangements were 
made accordingly. 



CHAPTER V, 



Enters College — Dr. Wylie — Governor Hendricks — -Dr. McMillan — Dr. 
Ramsey — Mode of Study — Franklin Society — As a Student — Corre- 
spondence with Home Circle — Its Character and Influence — The Father's 
Letters — Predestination. 



" TN May, 1809, father and mother and I set out in the 
J_ family carriage for Canonsburg, they to make some 
purchases in Pittsburg, and I to enter the grammar-school 
of Jefferson College. Arriving at Canonsburg in the mid- 
dle of vacation, they concluded to make a visit to my 
cousin, Gen. Thomas Patterson's family, and leave me 
there until college should open. Mrs. Patterson was the 
oldest daughter (Elizabeth) of Hon. Wm. Findley, pre- 
viously mentioned, whose wife was my mother's sister. 
Gen. Patterson was a man of some mark in Washington 
County, member of Congress and general of militia. He 
was the first to introduce the merino sheep into that (now) 
great wool-growing county. There I remained two weeks, 
and then went to Canonsburg. 

"At Jefferson I boarded for a time with Mrs. Canon, the 
widow of the proprietor of the town, in her family dwell- 
ing. Afterwards with a Mr. Daily, with whom also boarded 
the late President Andrew B. Wylie, and the late Governor 
Hendricks, of Indiana, both then in the junior class. Mr. 
Wylie was my tutor in Latin. I usually attended the min- 
istrations of the Rev. John McMillan, afterward Dr. Mc- 
Millan, in the old stone church of Chartiers, one mile south 
of the town; sometimes at Dr. Ramsay's (seceder), half a 
mile west of the village. Dr. McMillan was a man of a 
good deal of strength of mind, but did not study much. 
His preaching was warm and hortatory, his reproofs blunt, 
and often injurious, by reason of their harshness. Yet had 
he been the instrument of great good among the pioneers 
of that region, not only in preaching the gospel, but also 
in bringing out young men, and training them for the min- 
istry. His losr-cabin academy and theological school was 
(40) 



TALENT FOR WRITING AND DISCUSSION. 41 

really the nucleus of Jefferson College, and the parent of 
much of the education of the West. 

"Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Ramsey was a student and a rea- 
soner, and a man of great Christian amiability. His enun- 
ciation Avas slow, his attitudes ungainly, and he rubbed his 
chin so incessantly with his hand that his whole delivery 
was tedious and unattractive. Yet his discourses were clear 
and instructive to one willing to wait on his tardiness. I 
often thought that if these two men could be combined in 
one it would be a decided advantage to all parties. 

" Upon entering college, or rather its grammar-school, 
Ross's Latin Grammar was put into my hand, and no other 
study assigned. We were required to commit certain parts 
to memory, and recite by rote. Mr. Wylie never took a 
book in hand, having the whole in memory. No explana- 
tion was given until we had committed the book, and gone 
twice over it. The third time we parsed the examples 
under the Syntax rules, and committed most of the notes. 
Then we took to reading Corderii Colloquia, and other pri- 
mary books. I doubt whether this plan be not better than 
our present methods. It requires faith in the teacher, and 
creates memory. After all my experience, I think it best 
to study language first, and afterwards the philosophy of 
language. For two sessions we studied Latin, then began 
the Greek."* 

During the time of his connection with college, events 
occurred that form part of his own and the history of his 
times, which doubtless had their influence upon his forming 
character, but which he has not mentioned. He soon de- 
veloped a talent for writing and discussion, which made 
him somewhat distinguished among his fellows. He was a 
member of the "Franklin Literary Society" of the col- 
lege, and was twice, as the old archives of the society 
show, chosen "contestor," and won honors for the society 
in its annual "contests" with the rival organization, the 
"Philo Literary Society." 

His contemporaries in college spoke of him as a grave 

* Rem. 
4* 



42 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

and rather reserved youth, intent upon study, and full and 
accurate in his recitations. His powers of generalization 
and analysis, and his logical acumen, were early developed, 
and made him of mark as a reasoner ; and it was conceded 
that he was the best debater in the college. The institution 
was then in its formative state, and the regular college 
classes were small. The senior class, with which he grad- 
uated, consisted of but five members; but this had the ad- 
vantage of calling for frequent individual recitations, and 
consequent thorough training. 

Whilst in college, correspondence with his family was 
kept up. It is to be regretted that very few of his letters 
home are preserved ; but the tone of the letters from home 
to him (for we find many if not all of them on his files) is 
indicative of not only the deep affection with which he 
was regarded in the home circle, but also of the unwonted 
respect and confidence with which brothers and sisters 
looked upon him. Theyall betray great solicitude forhisspir- 
itual and intellectual progress, and they seem to have shown 
more reverence to him than in America is usually accorded 
even to the oldest son, although he was the fourth. The 
father's letters to him are fraught with paternal solicitude 
and wise counsel, and they sometimes betray a measure of 
respect for the judgment and the opinions of the son, 
which, from such a father, was highly complimentary to 
the maturity of the youth's understanding. It is to be 
regretted that the son's replies are lost ; but the father's 
letters disclose the fact that they discussed, in their corre- 
spondence, some of the gravest subjects in religion, morals, 
and civil government. This was, no doubt, one of the 
means of developing, in the young student, that capacity 
for tiiorough discussion which was characteristic of his 
maturer years. This was, in part, the training that quali- 
fied him for becoming such a master of the great principles 
of morals and of constitutional law, and for rendering 



DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 



43 



such valuable sendee in the two great controversies in which 
he bore a prominent part, — the struggle for church reform 
in 1834-38, and the struggle for national unity of 1861-65. 
His quenchless love for the Union, and his veneration for 
the Constitution of his country, and his ability to defend 
both, were fostered by the conversation and the corre- 
spondence of a father, who had bled, and toiled, and sacri- 
ficed for the establishment of both. He was early qualified 
to be the author of such a book as the "Political Fal- 
lacies." 

This correspondence cannot be largely quoted ; an ex- 
tract or two will suffice to show its general tone. In a 
letter, dated Mercer, June 17th, 1809, a note merely of 
fifteen lines, we read : 

" My Son, — I received your letter, and was glad to learn 

that you are well, — we at home are all well 

You, I hope, will pay all due attention to your morals, your 
health, and your college studies, and make use of all op- 
portunities to get your mind stored with useful ideas. If 
there is any book here which you would wish to have, men- 
tion it in your next letter, and perhaps I can send it. I 
think Buchanan's Syntax would be of use to you, but you 
can ask your instructors. I send by Mr. Johnson the money 
you require. I much approve of your plan of keeping a 
particular account of all your outlaymgs, and be careful of 
your money. Shun bad company, do not get too soon in- 
timate with any person, try all you can to keep both tables 
of the Law, viz., your duty to God and to man. 

" I remain your affectionate father, 

"Joseph Junkin." 

Another, dated a year and a half later, contains a suc- 
cinct argument in support of the position that the doctrine 
of predestination does not destroy mental freedom or re- 
sponsibility, nor supersede the use of means. So much 
only is inserted as will give a specimen of the father's 
mode of thought, which the son inherited and improved. 



44 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

"January 29, 1811. 

" My Son, — If you receive this letter you will have it in 
your power to read it or not read it, to burn it or not burn 
it, to show it to a fellow-student or not to show it. These, 
and many other things relative to it, you will feel yourself 
at liberty to do or not to do ; and whichever of them you 
shall do is exactly what was predetermined to be done. 
Here, I think, is freedom of will, and here is predestina- 
tion, — both existing without much contradiction. 

"That it is perfectly agreeable to the nature of things as 
divinely constituted that the destination of each should be 
unalterably fixed or predetermined, and that it is impossi- 
ble it should be otherwise, seems to me an undeniable 
truth. A person must either die, or live forever, and only 
one of these can possibly take place, for it is self-evident 
that he cannot both die and continue to live here forever. 
And if he dies he must die at some one time, in some one 
place, and in some one manner, for he cannot die at two 
different times, and in two different places and ways ; there- 
fore it follows that whichever of the two events, death or 
life, with the one time, place, and manner thereof, is the 
only one possible, and must have been fixed. 

" Moreover, all the thoughts, words, and actions of 
mankind, all the movements, both of the animate and in- 
animate creation, must necessarily go on in a certain man- 
ner, because it is impossible to reverse the actual state of 
things, or cause it not to be. A man's mother is his mother, 
and he is her son, and this relation is unalterably so. 

" On the other hand, suppose them to be alterable, and 
nothing but absurdity follows. The time of a man's birth 
or death might not be the set time ; the manner of it might 
not be the appointed manner; and the vast movements of 
creation and providence would be worse than a game of 
hazard. 

"Suppose a man should assert that his destination was 
not unalterably fixed, but that by Christ's death he was 
placed in such a state of salvability as that he could save 
himself, and that he now had it in his power to go either 
to heaven or hell, as he pleased. Now, by the foregoing 
reasoning, that same man will be either saved or not saved, 
for he cannot be both saved and damned ; and, even if he 
has the power of choice, I would say his destiny was fixed ; 



DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 



45 



because whatever may be the event was the very thing pre- 
destined ; and all the steps and means used to bring about 
the event were also fixed, and none else could take place. 
On the whole, I cannot see that even the admission of the 
above Arminian sentiment, in its full force, will shake the 
doctrine of predestination, or involve the Calvinist in 
greater difficulties than the Arminian 

"A very dreadful calamity lately occurred at the Falls 
of- Niagara. Four men were crossing the stream on a boat 
loaded with salt. They were, by the force of the current 
and a storm, forced into the tremendous rapids ; the steer- 
ing oar was thrown off, and one of the men, leaping upon 
it, struggled for the shore, and was saved. The boat, with 
the other three, was driven over the falls, and seen no 
more. Now will any man say that, if this fourth man had 
sat still in the boat, he would not have gone over with the 
rest, or that he would have been saved without using any 
means or exertion to save himself? I presume not. So 
the means must be used, in spiritual things also, or the end 
cannot be attained ; and both the means and the end are 
alike predetermined, and in such a manner as to leave the 
agent so far free as to make him responsible, and the ob- 
ject of blame, if duty be neglected. 

"Had the man sat still in the boat, and reasoned thus, 
' My doom is fixed : if born to be drowned I cannot 
escape, and if not, Imay: I will make no exertion;' or, 
after reaching the oar, had he, under a similar abuse of the 
doctrine, ceased to make exertion, he would have been 
lost. But he found himself in possession of means of es- 
cape (not very promising, either) ; he used the means with 
all his might, and was saved. Had he neglected exertion, 
he had failed in duty. But, believing that the oar and his 
own efforts were the predestined means of deliverance, he 

used means I have not brought forward 

Scripture in this letter, though there is abundance which 

would apply; but this you can find in your Bible. . . . 

"Your affectionate father, 

"Joseph Junkin." 



CHAPTER VI. 

War — Patriotism — Mercer Blues — Professes Religion— Rev. James Gallo- 
way — Closet in a Thicket — Religious Experience — Family Changes — 
Alleghany City in 1812 — Sad Tidings from Home — Returns Home — 
Perils by the Way — The Mother's Death — Graduation. 

WHILST Mr. Junkin was still in college, the troubles 
between the United States and Great Britain reached 
their crisis, and resulted in the war between these powers, 
begun in 1812, and public affairs were discussed in the 
correspondence between the home circle and the student. 
The letters all indicate strong indignation against the 
wrongs of America, and against the insults offered to our 
flag. There was organized at Mercer a large company of 
volunteer soldiers, of which the older brother, John Jun- 
kin, was captain, and the brother-in-law, Walter Oliver, 
and the second brother, Joseph Junkin, were subalterns. 
They tendered their services to aid General Harrison in his 
Northwestern campaign, in 1 Si 2 -13. Previous to their 
marching, and during one of his visits home, the student 
was invited to deliver an address before this body of sol- 
diers. The writer has heard survivors of that gallant band 
speak of that address with warm admiration; and it is 
manifest that the youth of 1812 exhibited in his oration 
the same spirit of devotion to country, which, half a cen- 
tury afterwards, the old man of threescore and twelve dis- 
played in the "Political Fallacies," and in many an address, 
and in many an effort to preserve the American Union. 

That company, the " Mercer Blues" as they were called, 

was a remarkable body of citizen soldiers. They numbered 

some eighty rifles ; and so large a proportion of them were 

pious young men, that, in every tent except two, family 

(46) 



PROFESSION OF RELIGION. 



47 



worship was maintained by the mess during the campaign, 
and in those two the captain often officiated. Nor did 
their devotion diminish the perfection of their military 
discipline and efficiency. Their drill was as perfect as that 
of regulars, and General Harrison often complimented 
them for their gallantry and soldierly bearing. 

But during these college years another important step in 
his moral and religious history was taken. The evidence 
of the great change, which, as we have seen, he thought had 
occurred in his tenth year, became more satisfactory ; his 
perception of the plan of salvation became clearer ; and, 
having embraced the promises of the covenant of grace, 
he made public profession of his faith in Christ. 

"During these four and a half (college) years, I was 
greatly exercised on the subject of my soul's welfare. 
Sometimes I thought that if two Sabbaths could come to- 
gether I would get through my difficulties. Often, under 
Dr. McMillan's preaching, my feelings became intense. 
No one ever said a word to me privately. I felt the burden 
of sin, but was long in obtaining a clear view of the 
method of deliverance. I still incline to the belief that the 
mustard-seed was planted and became a living thing in 
1799; but its growth was slow, — ah, how slow! But, 
nevertheless, I was regular in prayer, and always attentive 
to public and social worship ; yet in this last I was some- 
times wearied and impatient at the long prayers of some 
of Dr. M.'s elders; doubtless my want of heart in the 
matter formed an element in my weariness. 

"In 18 r 1, when at home, I first became acquainted with 
the Rev. James Galloway, who had some time before been 
ordained and installed over the Associate Reformed Church 
of Mercer, of which my father was a ruling elder. He was 
not a very profound scholar, but was naturally shrewd, 
logical, eloquent, and earnest. He was a graduate of Jef- 
ferson, and of Dr. Mason's Seminary. His preaching gave 
me the first clear views of the atonement and justification, 
and led me to enjoy comfort in believing, and to profess 
Christ. My father had told me, before I had heard Mr. 
Galloway, that I would hear ' something entirely different' 



48 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

from the preaching I had been accustomed to hear. And 
so I found it. The way of deliverance from sin by the 
blood of Christ, — of justification by his righteousness, — of 
sanctification by his Spirit, all became plain. My doubts 
and fears passed away, and I came to enjoy a good hope. 
I found more comfort in secret devotion. I used to walk 
out in the morning, for secret prayer and meditation. I 
selected a retired spot, on the bank of the Neshannock 
Creek, in the midst of a thicket of elder-bushes, as my 
closet; and there I wrestled often with the Angel of the 
covenant. When in Mercer County last, ten years ago 
(185 1), I went down and looked at the place. That year 
I formally united with the church, came to the holy sacra- 
ment of the Supper, and have enjoyed a general calm and 
steady hope ever since. It was in the courthouse, in 
Mercer, where the congregation then worshipped, that I 
first sealed the covenant. Often, indeed, up to the present 
time, have I had fights with Satan and 'the lust of the flesh, 
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life;' but through 
grace I have been kept for these fifty years, and God will 
keep me to the end."* 

During the summer of 181 1, he spent most of the time 
at Hope Mills, and all his vacations were spent there, ex- 
cept the spring vacation of 1S13, which was passed at 
Canonsburg. Whilst at home, his young pastor, Mr. Gal- 
loway, was his room-mate, and he not only heard him often 
from the pulpit, but was much in his private society; and 
doubtless this intercourse was blessed, as a means of pro- 
ducing the result above described. 

In the March (12) of 181 2, Mr. Galloway was married 
to the sister (Agnes) of Mr. Junkin, by the Rev. George 
Buchanan, pastor of the Associate Reformed Church, of 
Steubenville ; and on the 6th of the following June, Mr. 
Buchanan was married, by Mr. Galloway, to another sister, 
Mary. These sisters were twins, and bore so close a re- 
semblance to each other, that even their own children 



SAD TIDINGS FROM HOME. 



49 



sometimes failed to distinguish them. They were women 
of remarkable intelligence and decided Christian char- 
acter. 

Other events in the family history of an exciting, and 
some of them of a sad character, were now to follow in 
rapid succession. We have mentioned that the adult 
"boys" of the family had volunteered in the military ser- 
vice of their country. They marched to the frontier just 
before the student returned to college, in the autumn of 
1812. On his way to Canonsburg via Pittsburg, to make 
some arrangements, he passed their encampment. 

" I found them, with other troops, encamped near to the 
base of 'Hog-back,' now Alleghany City. The plain on 
which that part of the city now stands was overgrown with 
thick bushes eight or ten feet high. They had cut off the 
bushes from a space upon the spot where the Western Peni- 
tentiary now stands, and there they had pitched their tents ; 
and thence they marched to reinforce General Harrison, at 
Fort Meigs. They had volunteered for six months, but 
remained more than seven, until Harrison said he was safe 
without them. They (the Mercer Blues) found their own 
clothing, uniform, and all their own rifles, tomahawks, and 
knives, and their own Bibles and Psalm-books. From 
Canonsburg I proceeded to Steubenville, Ohio, to visit 
my sister (Mrs. Buchanan) and family. 

"There I heard of General Hull's surrender of the fort 
and army at Detroit, and witnessed the departure of Colonel 
Andrew's regiment for the Northwest, General Ben Tap- 
pan at its head. Brother Buchanan and I had accompanied 
the troops a few miles, and when we returned to town, we 
found a neighbor of the family at Hope Mills, who had 
ridden express, to bear to us the sad tidings that our mother 
had fallen, broke her spinal column, and would probably 
die. My sister set out with him forthwith, direct for 
Mercer. I mounted and rode for Pittsburg, to call on an 
eminent physician there. I rode thirty-six miles that 
night, — tried to force my horse into the swollen current 
of Chartiers's Creek, but he refused to enter. God would 
not permit me to drown myself and horse. I was com- 

5 



5 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

pelled to wait for daylight. Next day rode to Pittsburg, 
and thence home, sixty-five miles in all, — the longest 
horseback ride I ever made in one day. My dear mother 
suffered greatly. She said from the first she must die. 
She had often said, when the conversation had turned upon 
the approaching conflict with Britain, that she had seen 
one war, and she hoped she might not see another. Her 
wishes were gratified, though not precisely as she meant. 
She spoke calmly, almost triumphantly, of her approaching 
death, admonished us all to prepare, and remarked that 
none of us would be any great charge except David (the 
youngest). I told her not to be uneasy, that I would see 
that he should be taken care of. She said, 'The Lord 
will take care of you all if you only trust in Him.' I asked 
her if she felt that He had done so for her. She replied, 
'Oh, yes, I trust He has.' The family was standing 
around the bed as the last moment drew on; and after 
speech failed, she turned her eyes upon those on the right, 
then upon those on the left, looking each deliberately in 
the face, as if to look farewell, until she came to father, 

and on him she gazed to the last Oh, how 

my heart did bleed ! and, oh, how earnestly I did pray 
the Lord to receive her to Himself! This prayer was, I 
have not a doubt, answered to the full, for she had for 
scores of years labored to glorify Him before the world, in 
a lovely and consistent Christian life."* 

It is with a full and grateful heart, that the writer of these 
pages records that the pledge given to his dying mother, 
by this beloved brother, fifty-eight years ago, was faith- 
fully and lovingly redeemed. He did care for his baby- 
brother, with all a brother's tenderness, with all a father's 
solicitude; cared for him then, — cared for him through the 
educational period; and the more than paternal affection 
and fellowship of half a century have attested the strength 
and warmth of that love, which was enjoined by a dying 
mother's latest breath, and cherished, most likely, by her 
unseen angel-ministrations. 



GRADUATION. 5I 

In September, 1813, he passed his final examinations, 
and was admitted to the first degree in the arts, and shortly 
afterwards proceeded to Philadelphia, and thence to New 
York, to begin the study of theology under the great Dr. 
Mason. But as his journey thither was in strong contrast, 
as to time and mode, with journeys made between the same 
points now, we give his own account of it. This, with 
some retrospective matters, will be given in the next 
chapter. 



CHAPTER VII. 



Repairs to the Theological Seminary — Sets out — Last Interview with his 
Elder Brother — Correspondence between the Soldier and the Student — 
Journey to Philadelphia — Visit to Cumberland — -The School — Disap- 
pointment — Philadelphia — First Interviews with Life-long Companions. 

" T N October, 1813, I left home for New York, to study- 
theology with Dr. Mason. My father gave me a 
horse and an outfit, and some money. At Pittsburg I met 
my eldest brother, John, homeward bound from Washing- 
ton City. We stayed together that night at a hotel, and 
next morning we parted, never more to meet on earth. He 
had been appointed to a captaincy in the regular army of 
the U. S., at the instance, as we always supposed, of Gen- 
eral Harrison. My brother proceeded to Erie, and acted 
there as aid to General Tanehill. Afterwards was ordered 
on recruiting service to Mercer. Some of his men were 
taken sick in barracks, and in attending them he contracted 
a camp fever, and died April 27, 1814. He was a man of 
piety and prayer, of superior talents, great administrative 
ability, and very much of a favorite with the army and the 
public. His wife had died whilst he was absent in the 
Northwestern army, leaving an only daughter, now the wife 
of Hon. Wm. M. Francis, of Lawrence Co."* 

The two brothers, whose last earthly interview is recorded 
above, were both remarkable men ; and their characters, 
as formed under the influence of parental piety and prayer, 
give great encouragement to parents to be faithful, whilst 
they attest the truth of a covenant-keeping God. 

Captain John Junkin was the only one of the seven 
brothers who was not either a minister or an elder in the 



(52) 



SOLDIER AND STUDENT. 



53 



church, and he was, perhaps, the most devout of the seven 
who attained man's estate; but, as above mentioned, he 
died young. He had already excited high expectations in 
the public mind of his future usefulness and eminence. The 
people of his district had, in his absence, nominated him 
for a seat in the State legislature, but he declined it, on ac- 
count of his military engagements. A few extracts from 
letters that passed between the student brother in college, 
and the soldier brother on the tented field, will show some- 
thing of the spirit by which they were animated, whilst they 
will shed light upon the history of the period. The stu- 
dent thus writes : 

" Home, October 21, 1812. 

"Dear Brother, — Not that lean convey any important 
news, nor that I can communicate any instruction, but with 
the hope of administering some consolation and Christian 
exhortation, I take this opportunity of addressing you. 

"Since receiving news from you, Martha [the soldier's 
wife] is quite cheerful, and appears quite resigned to the 
dispensation of Providence that separates you, and you may 
be sure that if you write often you will relieve the anx- 
iety of all your friends. To-morrow I intend starting for 
Canonsburg, and if you will direct your letters to that place 
I will receive them, but the uncertainty of your location 
will render it difficult for my letters to reach you. But let 
not this prevent you from writing to me. 

"You doubtless know that Christian duties are apt to be 
shamefully neglected in all armies, and from your Bible you 
have learned, that when the Israelites neglected their Cre- 
ator He punished them ; but when their armies went forth 
trusting in and calling upon their God, He granted their 
requests, and made them to triumph over their enemies. 
This will ever be the case ; and I confidently expect (and 
this forms part of my daily prayer), that those men who 
daily called upon the Lord while abiding in quiet, peaceful 
homes, will not now, when called into danger, neglect this 
important duty. You know that military duty is apt to be- 
come irksome, on account of the men having so little to do. 
What employment, then, could engage the attention of the 
Christian soldier better than reading and meditating upon 
5* 



54 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 



that volume of inspiration which is worthy the study of the 
wisest? In this you will find abundant employment for 
your leisure moments. When I picture to myself a band 
of soldiers, sitting in the howling wilderness, surrounded 
by the savage foe, singing the praises of their God, I say 
to myself, Surely the Lord will go forth with their hosts, 
and my mind is filled with the highest hopes for your suc- 
cess I must conclude, commending you to 

the care of Him who has ever preserved you, and assuring 
you that your welfare and success are near my heart. Re- 
member me to ' the Mercer Blues' in terms of the highest 
respect. 

"Your friend and brother, 

" Geo. Junkin." 

The soldier brother writes to the student as follows : 

" Northwestern Army, near Mansfield, Ohio, 
"November 30, 1812. 

"Dear Brother, — I am happy to inform you that I 
am well, and that all my company are fit for duty except 
two. . . I expect both will soon be well. A melan- 
choly accident happened yesterday morning before day- 
light. A violent storm of wind blew down a tree upon 
our line of tents (Capt. Dawson's company), which killed 
one, and severely wounded five others. . . . You can 
imagine what a distressing scene this was to us; but it might 
have been more so. He who ruleth all things hath his de- 
sign in every event that takes place. Let man, poor mortal 
man, who cannot see one moment before him, be always 
ready to meet his fate, whether prosperous or adverse. Our 
battalion marched from here to-day as a guard to the artil- 
lery (thirty-one pieces) for Upper Sandusky. A body of 
troops lie at Lower Sandusky, a body at Huron, and the 
Kentuckians and Virginians move on to meet us at Upper 
Sandusky. General Tupper, with five hundred men, 
gave the Indians a severe brush at the rapids of Maumee, 
without the loss of a man in battle. He lost four killed 
and one wounded afterwards by a fire from a cornfield. I 
do not think we will see any Indian enemy this side of 
Detroit River; but if we should, and have to meet them in 
battle, I trust I shall be enabled to discharge my duty, both 



SOLDIER AND STUDENT. 



55 



as a soldier and a Christian, putting my trust where it may 
be safely placed. Our cause is a just one, and I have en- 
gaged in it, believing it to be so; and I will go forward 
with a full persuasion of assistance and protection from 
Him who is the Lord of armies, and who ruleth them as 
He sees proper. Do not forget to write to me .often, and 
forgive my negligence, for I have little time to spare, and 
a very inconvenient way of writing. But believe me, sir, 
your most affectionate brother, 

"John Junkin." 

The answer to the above, alluded to in the following, is 
not preserved. The soldier brother writes : 

" Headquarters, Miami Rapids, 
" February 12, 1813* 

"Dear Brother, — I received yours of the 26th ult., 
and intended answering it from Upper Sandusky, but was 
ordered off suddenly, and had not time; and now you can 
have but barely an acknowledgment. We arrived here 
yesterday. Our force I do not precisely know — perhaps 
five thousand. More will soon join us. Winchester's mis- 
fortune, at the river Raisin, you will have heard of perhaps 
more correctly than I could state it. Harrison pursued a 
body of Indians, two nights since, about twenty-five miles. 
They headed for Maiden, and he returned to camp. Our 

army is well supplied Desertion is not now 

frequent. The cowards, I think, are now all drained from 
among us, and the men now present in the army will do 
more than if they that have deserted had remained with us. 

"What the intended movements of the army are, none 
but General Harrison knows ; and it is right it should be 
so. What the results of the movements may be, God only 
knows. He who ruleth the armies of men, and giveth the 
battle to whom He pleaseth, can save by many or by few. 
That we may all be enabled to place our trust in the King 
of kings is the prayer of your 

" Most affectionate brother, 

"John Junkin." 

* Two days after the date of this letter, the young wife of the writer of it 
died, at his home at the Hope Mills. 



5 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

This much of the correspondence between these brothers 
will suffice to show the spirit of the young men, as Chris- 
tians and as patriots; and we digress no further. The 
student brother always retained a deep affection for the 
soldier. They met no more in this life after the parting 
above described. The one returned to his military duties 
upon our threatened frontier, the other proceeded to New 
York to prosecute his theological studies. We give, in his 
own words, his reminiscences of that journey: 

"Next day, after leaving Pittsburg, as I was ascending 
Turtle Creek Hill, eastward, I met some wagons hauling 
goods from Philadelphia. They had doubled teams going 
down hill, and yet were 'stalled' in the mud, with seven 
horses in a team. One of them shouted, as I passed, 
'Glorious work for ten dollars a hundred!' Thus, in Oc- 
tober, 1813, men complained that ten dollars was too little 
compensation for hauling one hundred and twelve pounds 
of goods from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. Lo, the change ! 
Now it can be done for one-twentieth of that sum. On 
Sideling Hill, near Mercersburg, I fell in with the Rev. 
John Jamieson, once pastor at Newville, and we rode to- 
gether nearly to that town. He was the grandfather of the 
Rev. Jesse M. Jamieson, our missionary to India." 

He then gives details of his visits in Cumberland County, 
which, although interesting to the family and their circle 
of acquaintances, would not interest the general reader. 
He visited his native mansion, walked over the grounds 
and through the apartments, and called upon many friends 
of his boyhood : 

" I hitched my horse in front of the old schoolhouse, 
and went in, and tried whether Master Jamieson would 
know me. But he did no*t. When I told him who I was, 
he seemed much moved, and very glad to see me. There 
were no scholars that I knew, though others of the same 
old families filled the benches. Seven years had made 
more changes in the schoolhouse than elsewhere in the 



ARRIVAL IN PHILADELPHIA. 



57 



neighborhood. I went down to D W 's, but * 

was not there. She was at Dr. Smith's, in Princeton, 
New Jersey. 

"Next day I went through Harrisburg. The bridge over 
the Susquehanna at that place was partly built, but we 
crossed in a scow. At Lancaster I sold (by auctioneer in 
the street) my horse, saddle, and bridle, and next day set 
out by stage fcr Philadelphia. Arrived there, I proceeded 
to deliver a letter of introduction from Mr. Galloway to 
the Rev. Dr. Gray, by whom and his family I was very 
kindly received. I was there introduced to Mr. John 
Knoxf and his brother Samuel. The former, like myself, 
was on his way to Dr. Mason's seminary, at New York ; 
the latter had come to take back the horse which he had 
ridden, for at that time there was no public conveyance 
from Gettysburg, near to which, in Adams County, the 
Knox family lived. 

" Next day, a young lady came in from the marble 
house, just round the corner (Tenth and Market) from 
Dr. Gray's. Her father was a ruling elder in the (Scots') 
church of which Dr. Gray was pastor, and the families 
were in close intimacy; and there, in that back parlor, I 
for the first time met one who was destined to bless me 
in a life of peace and joy known to few married pairs. 
Thanks be to God for his wondrous goodness. 

" Mr. Knox and I remained two or three days in Phila- 
delphia, both probably having some attractions. I was a 
novus homo, and had many sights to see in the city ; and 
the acquaintances we had made were pleasant. By this 
delay we lost Dr. Mason's introductory lecture. For two 
years there was before my eyes a vivid image of her whom 
I had met at Dr. Gray's. Then I heard in New York that 
the Rev. Charles G. McLean had married one of the 
Misses M. 'Which of them?' I inquired. 'The hand- 
somest,' was the reply. This threw a damper over my 

* Mrs. W. had been the widow of Dr. Witherspoon, and was now the 

wife of Mr. W , and her daughter is alluded to in the text ; the object 

of a boy affection. She was afterwards the wife of Dr. Woods, of Lewis- 
town. 

■f Here began an acquaintance and friendship that was life-long. See 
Appendix A. 



5 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

spirits, — I dared no further inquiry. More than a year 
passed after this before I ascertained that Mr. McLean had 
married the third Miss M., whom I had not seen when in 
Philadelphia, she having been with her sick father at their 
country-seat, near Valley Forge. So the youngest was still 
left." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Journey to New York — State of Travel in 1813 — Crossing the Hudson — 
The Slidells — First Meeting with Dr. Mason — Sketch of that Great Man — 
His Mode of Teaching — Commentators — Dr. Mason as a Preacher — 
His Wonderful Labors — The First Prayer-Meeting — The First Sabbath- 
School in N. Y.— Mr. J. the First Superintendent— Mr. J. Teaches— 
Elder Garrett Hyer — Pupils — Mrs. Bethune — Mrs. Graham — Dr. G. W. 
Bethune — Seminary Friendships — Eminent Contemporaries — Corre- 
spondence — Return to Hope Mills — Thirty Pieces of Silver. 

" T)UT, to return to historical order. Brother Knox and 
[j I started for New York by the 'swift sure line' of 
stages. We left Philadelphia at daylight, crossed the Del- 
aware at New Hope, and lodged the first night at Somer- 
ville, and reached Paulus Hook a little before sunset the 
next day. I have lived to pass from city to city in a little 
more than three hours. We crossed the Hudson in a ' shal- 
lop,' shaped a good deal like a clam-shell. Cross ledges 
were nailed to the bottom at either end, to prevent horses 
from slipping as they entered or went out. A similar con- 
trivance gave them sure footing upon the inclined plane, 
formed of planks, that constituted the landing on either 
side; and this plane was far under water, as to its lower 
portion, at high tide. The shallop had a mast and sails, 
as well as oars. It would sail only when there was a full 
load, and, as the stage did not go over, we had to wait a 
considerable while, until a sufficient number of carts and 
horses came to justify the voyage. Such was travel between 
the two great cities fifty years ago. 

" My emotions were very vivid when Brother Knox, who 
had been to the seminary before, pointed out, from the top 
of Bergen Hill, the various steeples of the city, and, among 
them, that of Dr. Mason's church, in Murray Street, where 

I expected to be a worshipper for four years 

I remained with Brother Knox that night at his boarding- 
house in Walker Street, and the next morning went to see 

(59) 



60 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

my friend McElroy,* at his boarding-place in Lispenard 
Street, and with him went to Dr. Mason's, and was intro- 
duced to that great man, great preacher, and great teacher, 

together with many of his students I went to 

boarding with a Mrs. Watson, in Liberty Street, near 
Greenwich. There were eight inmates of the family, . . . 
all now dead, unless it be H. Dodge, who has since been 
U. S. Senator from Wisconsin, and myself. How tran- 
sient and vain is human life ! There was no 
gas in New York then, and the first candles I bought were 
short six-dips, bought from John Slidell, a tallow-chandler 
in Broadway, whose shop, a one story, or story and a half, 
frame, stood opposite the lower part of Trinity Church- 
yard. This tallow-chandler was a respectable man, and, in 
my judgment, far superior to his son John, of secession 
notoriety, who was the boy in the shop who served me with 
short sixes. 

"Prof. James M. Matthews was instructor in Hebrew 
and church history in our seminary. He was at the same 
time pastor of Gardner Street — the South Dutch — Church. 
He was not very popular with the students in either depart- 
ment, and, indeed, it would have been difficult for even a 
man of abilities superior to his to have made any impres- 
sion alongside of the great Mason Of Dr. 

Mason the highest respect, veneration, and love pervaded 
all his students. His person was commanding, tall, erect, 
large, and dignified ; his presence and manner graceful, 
kind, courteous. At first one felt awe-struck in his pres- 
ence, but, after a few moments' conversation, felt perfectly 
at ease, and embosomed in friendship and confidence. He 
had a wonderful capacity to draw out a young man, and 
make him think for himself. Indeed, he often said, 'You 
must educate yourselves. I can do but little for you, and 
that little is just to guide you in the work of self-educa- 
tion.' 

" Dr. Mason's method of instruction was the conversa- 
tional lecture. He held that a system of read lectures was 
never efficient ; this he called the pumping system. . . . 
To aid, the student in thinking, he submitted a series of 
questions upon every subject studied. He carried on three 

• Dr. Joseph McElroy, another life-long friend. 



SKETCH OF DR. MASON. 61 

courses, — Old Testament difficulties, New Testament diffi- 
culties, and Systematic Theology, the Confession of Faith 
being the text-book. On the other subjects the original 
Hebrew and Greek were the only text-books, but reference 
was made to authors for aid. He everywhere interrogated 
his students, stating difficulties and asking their solution. 
He was never satisfied with a statement of what the refer- 
ence books said, but ' What do you think and say on this 
subject? What does the Bible say? How do you under- 
stand its teaching?' Human authority in divine things he 
always and utterly ignored. He rather discouraged read- 
ing, and especially commentators. 'First of all,' he would 
say, 'go to the originals; study, labor, compare; and when 
you have worked out your matter yourself, then you may 
consult commentators to advantage ; but do not go to them 
in the first instance, or you will sacrifice the independence 
of your own minds, and take for commandments the doc- 
trines of men.' 

"As a preacher, my estimate of him may be inferred from 
the fact that during the first three sessions he never de- 
livered a discourse in New York that I did not hear. The 
fourth I missed some, because, having been licensed to 
preach, I was often called to preach myself, and so could 
not hear him. His power in the pulpit as an expounder 
and enforcer of Bible truth was unique, and bid defiance 
to all comparison. I never heard any other preacher in 
whom I could find the elements of a comparison. The 
grand subject of our Saviour's divinity, anything that 
tended to enhance our estimate of the glory of the Son of 
God, instantly aroused him, and called forth all the ener- 
gies of this intellectual giant. No man, in the range of my 
knowledge, could ever roar like this lion, or soar like this 
eagle. Oh, how often I have wished that I could live 
always in New York and be under his ministry ! 

"He never used notes in the pulpit until near his end, 
and was much opposed to the practice. Reading is not 
preaching, and no man can throw his soul into his utter- 
ances who is tied down to paper. But there is no man so 
strong but that he maybe overburdened and broken down. 
He was Provost of Columbia College, pastor of a new and 
large church, and professor in the seminary. He had about 
sixteen sermons, lectures, and recitations per week. He 
6 



62 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

had no salary as professor of the seminary, and that from 
the congregation was inadequate to support his family, 
therefore he undertook the college labor, and was thus 
crushed down in the middle of his days! The church, by 
imposing upon one man the work of three, broke him down 
by his fiftieth year, thus losing twenty years' service of this 
great champion of truth."* 

Whilst in attendance at the theological seminary, that 
earnest spirit of Christian enterprise that marked the whole 
career of Dr. Junkin began to develop itself. He was one 
of the organizers of the first public social prayer-meetings 
held in the Associate Reformed Church ; and he opened 
with prayer the meeting called to organize the first Sabbath- 
school, and of that school he was the first superintendent. 
Of these facts the following mention is made in the Rem- 
iniscences : 

"The great desideratum of that day, in the Associate 
Reformed Churches, was the social prayer-meeting. There 
were two or three small private meetings, of perhaps eight 
to fifteen persons, kept up in private parlors. One of 
these, which I generally attended, was held at the house of 
Elder Rich. These were useful, but there was no prayer- 
meeting of a public character, to which all were invited, 
until 1815. Brother Robert McCartee (afterwards Dr. 
McCartee) and I busied ourselves in regard to this matter. 
We went to the pastors, Drs. Mason, Clarke, and McLeod, 
and, obtaining their consent, commenced a meeting which 
never stopped. We got the ministers to come, generally, 
and make addresses, and the laymen to lead in prayer. It 
was opened in the schoolroom of the old Scotch Church 
in Pine Street, now Dr. McElroy's in Fourteenth Street. 
Of the early and. active promoters of the prayer-meetings, 
was ruling elder Garrett Hyer, a wholesale grocer and an 
active co-laborer with Dr. Mason in the Murray Street 
Church. At the close of my first session, in the spring 
of 1814, this gentleman invited me to make one of his 
family, and oversee the studies of his children, and see 



FIRST SABBATH-SCHOOL IN NEW YORK. 65 

that they got their lessons well for the schools which they 
attended. Besides this, I taught arithmetic one hour a 
day in a female seminary, conducted by Miss McLeod. 
There were only two boys in the school, by special favor, 
Alexander Slidell, brother of John, and Alexander Rogers, 
grandson of Dr. Rodgers, pastor of the First Presbyterian 
Church. The former had his name changed, by the addi- 
tion of McKenzie ; he became an officer in the U. S. navy, 
and was the same who hung, at the yard-arm, young Spen- 
cer and another youth for attempted mutiny, and whose 
own neck was afterwards broken by his horse falling in the 
streets of Sing Sing. 

"In February or March, 1815, Dr. Mason gave notice 
from the pulpit, one Sabbath morning, inviting the people, 
gentlemen particularly, to remain after the congregation 
was dismissed, to take into consideration the formation of 
a Sabbath-school. Alderman McCartee, an elder, asked me 
to open the meeting with prayer, which I did. Arrangements 
were made .and a school organized by the next Sabbath. 
I was made superintendent, and remained so till I left the 
city. Mrs. Bethune had held a school in her parlor the 
Sabbath before. But ours was the first public organization 
of a Sabbath-school. Others, however, were formed the 
same day. Mrs. Bethune had received papers from Mr. 
Bogue, of England, giving accounts of their operation in 
that country. 

" This eminently godly woman is too well known to need 
mention from me. The daughter of that eminent saint, 
Isabella Graham, and wife of that man of God, Divie 
Bethune, she was the mother of that very popular and im- 
pressive preacher, George W. Bethune, D.D. By way, as 
I supposed, of aiding me, and of getting George trained 
to regular habits of study, she sent him to me, for instruc- 
tion in history, etc., one hour a day. 

"In 1815, the ladies of Mr. Hyer's family and myself 
spent some two months of the hot term at the seashore, 
near Shrewsbury River. Mr. Hyer and the boys came 
down generally on Saturday, and we enjoyed salt-water 
and sea-air, with rough country fare, with a zest. This 
rustication was of great advantage to my health. ' ' 

During these years of seminary life, Mr. Junkin had 



64 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

formed friendships with a pretty large circle of his fellow- 
students, many of whom have been eminent lights of the 
church and the world in their generation. These friend- 
ships were fostered by close and genial Christian intimacy 
in term-time, and by correspondence during vacations, and 
after some of his friends who were further advanced in 
their studies had left the seminary and entered upon active 
ministerial life. Many of these friendships proved life- 
long, and of a warmth and permanency rarely witnessed 
in this world of selfishness. It has often and truthfully 
been remarked, that Dr. Mason's students retained for each 
other a very ardent and lasting regard, which years, dis- 
tance, and the cares of life and of official duty seemed 
powerless to abate. And they were no ordinary men. A 
remarkable proportion of them became eminent in the 
sacred profession, occupied the high places of the field, 
and were noted for ability, efficiency, and usefulness in 
their Master's service. Such were Drs. Knox, McElroy, 
Phillips, DeWitt, of Harrisburg, Duncan, McClelland, Duf- 
field, Campbell, C. G. McLean, Presley, of Pittsburg, Steel, 
Galloway, MacDill, Van Vechten, and many others. 

The writer has had opportunities of noting this charac- 
teristic of Dr. Mason's pupils, a phenomenon in social and 
even in Christian life as unusual as it is pleasing. He has 
heard others commenting upon it, and cannot but think 
that it is attributable, in great measure, to the impress left 
upon them by that great master in Israel. Rarely has 
there been such a combination of transcendent intellect, 
large and loving heart, gentle magnanimity, profound eru- 
dition, childlike humility, commanding physique, courtly 
yet conciliatory manners, and impressive presence, as met 
in Dr. Mason. Rarely has there arisen a great teacher 
who could so impress himself upon his pupils ; and rarely 
has one been found, the rout ensemble of whose character 
and presence so tended to wither, in those who approached 



SEMINAR Y FRIENDSHIPS. 



65 



him, the baser elements of manhood. Meanness quailed 
before him, and he seemed to possess an almost magnetic 
power of attracting others to the emulation of his own 
high habitude. Loving Christ with intense fervor, and 
loving his students for Christ's sake, they seemed to 
breathe, whilst with him, an atmosphere of love, that ever 
after drew them to one another. In the eloquent language 
of his worthy grandson: 

"Dr. Mason's moral qualities were commensurate with 
his towering mental endowments. His standard of excel- 
lence was a lofty one. That which was low and mean and 
grovelling he could not abide. It was spurned from his 
presence. Yet was he tender as the most loving woman, 
and ready to condescend to those of low estate, and help 
them to rise. His students were his friends and his brethren. 
They were gathered to his heart in the most sincere regard 
and love, and whatever he had, or could command, was 
freely devoted to their use and enjoyment. It was not, 
then, wonderful, that in this seminary were formed friend- 
ships of the tenderest and most enduring character, and 
that from it went forth, to the service of the church, men 
fully equipped to do duty most effectively, and in the sub- 
lime spirit of true Christian devotion. It is not wonderful, 
that, to their latest hours, they loved each other with a 
mighty love, and kindled always into a fervent glow in the 
memories of the years they had spent under the instruction 
of their almost idolized preceptor !"* 

Dr. Junkin, with that systematic order which marked 
his life and was an element of his success, had preserved, 
in regular files, most, if not all, of his correspondence ; and 
the letters from his fellow-students, extending through a 
period of fifty-five years, contain abundant proof of the 
facts just commented upon. The writer was strongly 
tempted to make copious extracts from these and other 
letters, not only to illustrate the above interesting fact, 

* Dr. J. H. Mason Knox's discourse, commemorative of Dr. Junkin. 

6* 



66 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

but because they afford very interesting indices of the 
spirit of the periods at which they were written, contain 
many facts not elsewhere recorded, and evolve, in no small 
measure, the inner life that gave shape to much of the 
ecclesiastical history of the period in which these distin- 
guished men were actors. He is restrained only by the 
considerations that these letters were not written for the 
public eye, — that most of their authors have gone to their 
reward, and their consent cannot be obtained, — and be- 
cause their insertion would swell this volume beyond the 
allotted limits. 

Circumstances occurred which induced Mr. Junkin to 
defer attendance upon the fourth year's studies in the 
seminary course until after his licensure, and some time 
was spent in actual labor in the field. These circum- 
stances he details in his Reminiscences, as follows: 

"Early in June, we received information [he was then 
at the seashore] that Dr. Mason was about to make a 
voyage to Europe, and would be absent a year. I did not 
care to spend a session at the seminary without his pres- 
ence and instructions. I concluded, under advice of my 
Presbytery, to take license to preach, and await Dr. M.'s 
return. The rule of the Associate Reformed Church made 
it obligatory upon all their students to study four years at 
the seminary before licensure. I accepted the proffer of 
license, upon the express condition, that I should be per- 
mitted to spend the fourth session at the seminary after 
Dr. Mason should return, as the studies of the fourth year 
were chiefly under his instruction. Dr. M. heard of my 
proposed license, and wrote to me a most earnest letter, 
remonstrating against my course, closing with this remark : 
' Never sacrifice great general principles to mere temporary 
expedients.' 

"The Presbytery [of Monongahela] having assigned me 
subjects for trial, I went West with a view to meet Pres- 
bytery. My friend McElroy, the two Lees, and myself, 
procured a two-horse conveyance, and set out to go via 
Easton, Allentown, Reading, Harrisburg, and Carlisle, 






THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER. 



6 7 



direct to Pittsburg. We were rather a jovial party, and 
the journey, though long, was a pleasant one. After spend- 
ing a Sabbath in Cumberland County, we reached Pittsburg 
in safety. The chief embarrassment in travelling, at that 
period, was the want of money that would pass. Specie was 
hid away. There was nothing to be had but paper rags, 
mostly of focal circulation. My kind friend Mrs. Hyer, 
anticipating this difficulty, had quietly stored away, for my 
use, all the silver pieces she could obtain ; so that I had 
enough to bear me through: all, too, in small pieces. 
After arriving at Mercer I had some left, and gave thirty 
pieces of silver to the Mercer Bible Society, remarking, in 
a public meeting, ' Here are thirty pieces of silver, the 
same number at which a great personage was valued. I 
give it to promote His glorious cause.' " 



CHAPTER IX. 

Licensed to Preach — Refused at first by the Presbytery on account of his 
Liberal Views on Catholic Communion — First Sermon — Worship in the 
Woods — Casuistic Illustrations — Itinerates — The Fallen Minister and the 
Temperance Resolve — Called to Newville — Declines it — Synod — First 
Sermon in Philadelphia — Proceeds as an Itinerant — Visits Northern New 
York — Final Parting with Galloway — Last Session at the Seminary — In- 
vited to Newburg— Declines— Pearl Street— Wall Street— Dr. Phillips- 
Leaves New York for Philadelphia — Enters upon Missionary Work — 
Silas E. Weir — Mrs. Duncan's Vow and Church — Philadelphia in 1817 — 
Ordination — High Sense of Duty — Matrimonial Engagement. 

"TN September, with all my trials ready, I went to meet 
J_ the Presbytery, at Noblestown, Alleghany County, 
Pa. My exercises were all sustained ; but whilst under 
examination, the Rev. Mungo Dick asked my opinion in 
regard to intercommunion with other branches of the 
church, — a subject which, at that time, was exciting great 
commotion. I stated that my opinions coincided with 
those of Dr. Mason, who had published a book upon the 
subject, viz., that all true believers were one in Christ, 
and might, when occasion offered, hold fellowship at the 
Lord's table, etc. I was then asked to promise not to 
preach this doctrine. To this I objected, alleging that 
there was, in the book directing the mode of license, no 
such promise authorized or required. I said I did not de- 
sign to preach it among their churches at that exciting 
time ; but I would not consent to bind myself indefinitely. 
The Presbytery then refused to license me to preach the 
gospel. I then asked for a dismission, to place myself 
under the care of the Presbytery of Big Spring, east of 
the mountains. They hesitated at this request ; and, 
after some time, they revoked the refusal, licensed me, 
and gave me appointments to preach in their vacant 
churches."* 



(68) 



LICENSURE. 



6 9 



It thus appears that, even before he was licensed to 
preach, Mr. Junkin had taken a firm stand against the 
restrictive policy in regard to Christian communion, and, 
whilst willing to submit to his brethren so far as to promise 
not to agitate this subject among their churches, was firm 
in adhering to principle, even at the risk of great incon- 
venience in the disconcerting of his plans. 

"The first of the vacancies which I was appointed to 
supply was Butler, Pa. The appointment was made near 
sundown on 16th of September, 1816, the day on which 
I was licensed. Butler was forty-six miles distant, — no 
notice had been given, — but I reached the place on Satur- 
day p.m., and the next day I preached twice in the court- 
house of that place. This was my first service as a preacher 
of the Word. Next Sabbath, September 24, I preached at 
White-Oak Spring, six miles from Butler, where a tent or 
rostrum was erected, in the wild woods. This was the first 
time worship was held upon that spot. Afterwards it be- 
came the seat of a flourishing church The details 

of my preaching may be found in the memoranda I have 

always kept By these my children can ascertain, 

if they wish, where I was and what I preached from, any 
Sabbath since I was licensed, except a very few instances. 

" Shortly after the meeting at which I was licensed, the 
Presbytery met in Pittsburg, to ordain and install, over the 
first A. R. Church of that city, my dear friend McElrOy. 
During the ordination service, the two ministers who had 
chiefly opposed my licensure — one from Ireland and 
another from North Britain — were spending their time at 
the tavern where they had left their horses. These men 
were too holy to participate in the ordination of a man 
who felt himself not too holy to commune with evangelical 
Christians out of his own denomination; but they were 
not too holy to drink gin and speak censoriously of the 
Presbytery and of the man whom they were ordaining. 
How marvellous the modifications of the human conscience ! 
To sing a hymn or a psalm not of the approved version, 
or to go to the table of the Lord in another church than 
your own, is a grievous sin ; but to drink gin is no sin, 
if it be done in connection with ardent zeal for the ortho- 
dox faith ! 



70 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

" The next Sabbath (Oct. i) I spent at Mercer, near to 
the home of my father. It was sacramental occasion, and 

I preached four times On the last Sabbath 

of the year I preached in a cabin, some thirty miles west 
of Cadiz, Ohio. The cabin was about eighteen feet by 
eighteen, and served for kitchen, parlor, and bedroom, 
and, on this occasion, for church. It was filled with people 
to hear the Word, and many, though it was winter, stood 
outside Upon this spot, then nearly a wil- 
derness, there now stands a town, with a college, three 
churches, and a thrifty population. Next day I reached 
Pittsburg, and on the following (New Year's) dined with 
my friend McElroy, upon whom I had waited at his mar- 
riage a few weeks before. . . . From Pittsburg I went 
to Newville, Cumberland Co.; spent a Sabbath at a preach- 
ing station down the Juniata, below Bedford, and passed 
through Black-Log and Ambrose Valleys, and over Black- 
Log Mountain by an almost impassable bridle-path, and 
arrived at Newville, where I was asked to preach, with a 
view to the pastorate. There I preached two Sabbaths. 
Between them I went to Carlisle, and preached of a Wed- 
nesday evening for Brother Duffield.* In his study, at Dr. 

Armstrong's, he informed me of the fall of the Rev. , 

one of our ministers of brilliant abilities, under the fell 
power of alcohol. Then and there, before I rose from my 
seat, I secretly decided a question which the frequent pre- 
sentation of intoxicating drinks, as a token of hospitality, 
had forced upon me ; and I resolved ' that, God helping 
me, I would never again drink any ardent spirits, unless in- 
dispensable as a medicine.' I never was drunk in my life, 
never approximated that state, although my father, like 
others, had always kept it about the house, and it had been 
used constantly in harvest and under any peculiar exposure. 
But I had seen so much of its tendency, and had been so 
often importuned to drink, that I saw my only safety was 
in total abstinence. 

"My visit to Newville resulted in a call, which I was 
constrained to decline, from considerations frankly and 
fully expressed to the representatives of the church. "f| 

* Dr. George Duffield, late of Detroit. f Rem. 

X One was insufficient support, the other that too much whiskey was used 
among the people. 



FIRST SERMON IN PHILADEIPIIIA. 



7* 



In the spring of 181 7 Mr. Junkin was at Philadelphia at 
the meeting of Synod, where he and his friend McElroy 
were the guests of Mrs. Engles, mother of the Rev. Dr. 
Wm. M. Engles and his equally learned and excellent 
brother, Joseph P. Engles. During the sessions of Synod, 
he preached his first sermon in Philadelphia, from the text, 
I. John v. 20, "This is the true God." There he renewed 
his acquaintance with the Miller family, into which he 
afterwards married. Dr. Mason had, meanwhile, returned 
from his European tour, and was present at the Synod, and, 
in the presence of that body, gave a graphic and amusing 
account of the state of religion in Europe, and especially 
in France, where most of his time had been spent. After 
the Synod adjourned, Mr. J. went to New York, accom- 
panied by his brother-in-law, the Rev. James Galloway, 
travelling on horseback. Mr. GalloAvay's health was fail- 
ing, and his tour was made in hope of restoring it. 

"The General Synod of the A. R. Church had control 
of all licentiates and unsettled ministers, and distributed 
their labors among the Presbyteries according to their sev- 
eral needs. Each Presbytery appointed them to supply 
particular vacancies whilst within its bounds. I was sent 
into the bounds of the Presbyteries of New York and Sar- 
atoga. Whilst in New York, I preached my first sermon 
in Dr. Mason's church, and then proceeded to labor until 
Fall in the bounds of the above-named Presbyteries. My 
first point, after leaving the city, was Newburg, a vacancy. 
We crossed at Hoboken, and travelled on horseback up the 
west side of the river. 

"At Newburg we joined Mr. Allen D. Campbell (after- 
wards Rev. Dr. Campbell, of Pittsburg). After a few days 
we separated, they, Galloway and Campbell, crossing the 
North River. I gazed after them as long as they could be 
discerned, believing, in regard to my dear Galloway, that 
it was my last sight of him on earth. And so it proved. 
After preaching two Sabbaths at Newburg, I passed up 
through Albany and Troy to Cambridge, my next station. 
Troy was then an insignificant village. I visited Salem, 



7 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

where then resided that eminently godly man, Dr. Proudfit. 
I never was in a family where religion seemed so much the 
business of the household. Three times a day they held 
family worship. His son John, then a boy, was afterwards 
Dr. Proudfit, Professor in Rutgers College. 

"From Salem I went to White Hall, — the Skeensborough 
of the Revolutionary period, — a small village at the head 
of Lake Champlain. There I saw the hulks of McDon- 
ough's fleet, made of pine timber, and fast decaying. 
Hence I proceeded to Florida, one of my stations. Thence 
I visited Union College, at Schenectady. Thence to Cal- 
edonia, where I preached two Sabbaths. The congregation 
here were all Scotch. They showed me great kindness, and 
made a very pressing request that I should permit them to 
make out a call for me. But I persisted in my purpose of 
returning to the seminary. At Caledonia my nice straw- 
berry-roan horse died, and I took stage to Newburg, and 
thence to New York by a sloop from Kingston. 

"I had been written to by the Session of the Second A. 
R. Church, Pearl Street near Broadway, New York, to come 
and supply them, but felt bound to fulfil my appointments 
at Caledonia. Before I returned to the city and had an 
opportunity of preaching to them, my beloved classmate 
Phillips* had preached for them, and was called to be 
their pastor. He labored among them for a few years, and 
was then called to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian 
Church, of which he is still (1862) pastor. Their house 
of worship then stood in Wall Street, between Nassau and 
Broadway. They subsequently built the house now in Fifth 
Avenue, and the old stone First Church was taken to Jersey 
City, stone by stone, and re-erected there, precisely as it 
stood in Wall Street. 

"During the session of 1817-18, I preached again at 
Newburg, N. Y., and was urged to permit them to make a 
call for me ; but, having visited 1 hiladelphia during the 
holidays, my attention was drawn to the Margaret Duncan 
Church, in Thirteenth Street, just erected, and to the pro- 
posal to attempt building up a congregation there. I 
therefore declined acceding to the proposal from Newburg. 



Dr. W. W. Philli 



MRS. DUNCAN'S CHURCH. 



73 



I spent the winter in New York, at the seminary, occasion- 
ally preaching the gospel.* 

"In March, 1818, I left New York, and proceeded to 
Philadelphia. Dr. Mason had just returned from a visit 
to that city, and informed me that Mrs. Duncan's church 
edifice, Thirteenth Street, was completed and was a vacancy, 
and he encouraged me to make an effort to gather a con- 
gregation in it. He said the building was too small to 
contain a congregation large enough to support a minister, 
but that, if the effort should be successful, the edifice could 
be enlarged, and that provision would be made for my 
support as an evangelist. As I was departing from his 
house, he accompanied me to the door, and gave me a 
parting blessing, ' Let not your heart be troubled, neither 
let it be afraid.' 

"At Philadelphia, I became an inmate of the family of 
Mr. Silas E. Weir; and here I remained, at free quarters, 
until July, when the family left the city, a generous contri- 
bution to the missionary effort. And for thirty-six years 
his house was my home, when in the city. Mr. Weir was 
a Scotch-Irishman, and a noble specimen of the high- 
minded and generous Christian gentleman. Besides this, 
I received from the Philadelphia Missionary Society a 
small stipend of fifty dollars per month. 

"The church edifice stood in Thirteenth Street, half a 
square north of Market, and was a small but substantial 
brick structure. It was built in pursuance of the will of Mrs. 
Margaret Duncan, grandmother of the late Rev. Dr. John 
M. Duncan, of Baltimore, who had made a vow, during 
the perils of a storm at sea, that, if spared, she would 
build a house unto the Lord.f 

* Rem. 

")" The Rev. John Chambers, whose ministry was also begun in this house, 
gives, in an appendix to the sermon preached upon the fortieth anniversary 
of his pastorate, the following account of this matter : 

"The vessel in which Mrs. Duncan came a passenger from Ireland, her 
native land, was overtaken by a violent storm, which lasted for several days, 
until the captain and crew gave up in despair, and so announced to the 
ship's company. Mrs. Duncan, being pre-eminently a woman of God, went, 
in the midst of the howling tempest and wild wailings of the passengers 
and crew, in faith to the God of the winds and waves, and invoked his 
gracious interposition and protection. At the same time, while bowed be- 

7 



7 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKhV. 

" My preaching stations were, in the morning of each 
Lord's day in the Camden Academy, N. J., in Moyamen- 
sing in the afternoon, in the Thirteenth Street Church at 
night, and in a schoolhouse on Front above Arch, Wednes- 
day evenings. 

"There were but four or five small houses on Thirteenth 
near Market Street, four two-story bricks in Market, and 
a few wooden houses between Thirteenth and ' Centre 
Square,' as it was called, although it was inclosed at that 
period in one large circular paled fence, with gates for 
foot-passengers in the centre of Market and Broad Streets. 
There was a small house for water- works in the centre of 
the circle, and a vault for oil-barrels on the west side of it. 
West of this there were not more than six or seven houses, 
of inferior structure, in Market Street. All the space west 
of Broad Street, north and south, was unoccupied waste, 
except a few frame buildings near Paul Beck's shot-tower, 
on Arch Street about three blocks from the Schuylkill, 
occupied by the employees about the tower. There was 
also a little hamlet of small houses about Sixteenth and 
Walnut, occupied by persons employed about the brick- 
yards in that locality. 

" Such was my missionary field in Philadelphia. Here 
I labored for six months. But the enterprise was premature. 
There was but a sparse population and few buildings, and 
the experiment was but partially successful. Although there 
was a nucleus for a congregation gathered at Thirteenth 
Street, it was not such as to encourage an organization, 
previous to the time I left the field."* 

Mr. Junkin was ordained as an Evangelist, sine titulo, on 
the 29th day of June of this year (1818), by the Associate 
Reformed Presbytery of Philadelphia. The Presbytery 
felt authorized to take this step in consideration of the 



fore the God of the Covenant, Mrs. Duncan entered into covenant with 
God, that, if he would abate the storm and carry the ship's company safe 
to land, she would cause to be erected a house of worship to his honor and 
glory. God heard her prayer, the ship was brought safe to land, with her 
crew and passengers, and Mrs. Duncan fulfilled her vow by the erection ot 
the church on Thirteenth above Market Street." 
*Rem. 



ORDINA TIOJV. 



75 



facts that he had been "a, probationer" two years; had 
proved very acceptable to the congregations; had been 
proffered several calls to the pastoral office, and that his 
missionary work required it. The ordination solemnity 
took place in the A. R. Church, Gettysburg, Pa., in the 
very place where, forty-five years afterwards, he was found 
assiduously laboring among the wounded and the dying, 
during the weeks that succeeded the terrible battle of July 
3, 1863. The Rev. John Mason Duncan, of Baltimore, 
preached the sermon, and the Rev. Dr. Ebenezer Dickey 
gave the charge. 

Mr. Junkin, a year later, became, by his marriage, the 
brother-in-law of Dr. Dickey, and also of Dr. McLean, the 
pastor of the church in which he was ordained. The can- 
didate had observed the day preceding his ordination 
as a day of prayer, with strict fasting. He evidently was 
impressed with a very high and solemn estimate of the 
importance and sacredness of the ministerial office, and 
entered upon the full work of that office with fear and 
diffidence, and yet with earnest determination to be faith- 
ful to his ordination vows. Speaking in his Reminiscences 
of the occasion of his ordination, he says: "It was a 
solemn scene. Paul's charge to Timothy lay heavy on my 
soul." Of the binding obligation of his ordination vows, 
in all their details, he ever retained a delicate and solemn 
conviction. He entered the ministry as a life-work ; and 
looked upon ordination vows, not as transient promises, 
to be kept or not as personal convenience or popularity 
might suggest, but as engagements made, under the most 
solemn sanctions to God and to his church, to be literally 
and faithfully interpreted, and to be of life-long obligation. 
If those Christians of his generation, who have spoken 
censoriously of his zeal for God's precious truth, could 
have looked in upon the chamber of the young licentiate 
during that day of fasting and prayer at Gettysburg; 



7 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

could they have witnessed his earnest wrestling with God 
for grace to be faithful to the vows he was about to as- 
sume; and could they have understood, as he did, the 
promise "to be zealous and faithful in maintaining the 
truths of the gospel and the peace and purity of the church, 
whatever persecution or opposition may arise unto you on 
that account;" they might have been able to make a more 
just estimate of his life-long and unflinching loyalty to 
truth. He believed that ordination vows are made to God ; 
that they are registered in heaven ; that they bind the 
conscience, and that in their plain and obvious sense ; and 
that to violate them is a crime partaking of the nature of 
both sacrilege and perjury. 

After his ordination he returned to Philadelphia and 
resumed his missionary labor. In the following August 
he was absent from the city, supplying Mr. Duncan's 
church in Baltimore for two Sabbaths, and Gettysburg, 
Bedford, and McConnellsburg, one Sabbath each. He had 
been importuned by Mr. Duncan and his people, in March 
and April, to accept of a more protracted engagement in 
Baltimore, on account of the illness of that distinguished 
minister. And the correspondence, still on file, is illus- 
trative of Mr. Junkin's scrupulous adherence to the minutue 
of what he deemed right. He resisted the importunity to 
leave, even for a time, his missionary field in Philadelphia, 
although to have yielded promised pecuniary and other 
advantages. A brief extract from one of the letters will 
explain this matter, and show that the young licentiate was 
as firm in adhering to what he supposed to be his obliga- 
tions as was the mature man of later life : 

" I hope you will not think us too importunate or 
pressing. If you knew the state of our city, in point of 
evangelic preaching; the manner in which our people are 
scattered on the Sabbath, when I am laid by, without a 
substitute to take my place, and contrast our situation 



HIGH SENSE OF DUTY. 



77 



with that of those to whom you minister as a missionary, 
I know I should find no difficulty to induce you to recon- 
sider the decision you have formed. It is true ' an engage- 
ment is sacred, and ought not to be violated, even in 
appearance, without a reason paramount to the obligation' 
or sufficient to justify a departure from it. But can you 
not promise a future compliance? Can you not get some- 
body to step for the present into your shoes? or can you 
not arrange the various duties in such a manner as to 
divide them among a number of ministers? I wish you 
would explore every avenue, try every expedient, and admit 
every allowance." 

But the young licentiate considered his " engagement 
so sacred" with his missionary field, that he resisted this 
importunity, and, with the exception of the two Sabbaths 
above mentioned, declined laboring in Baltimore. 

The Miller family were on a visit to Gettysburg at the 
time he preached there in August, and on his return journey 
to Philadelphia Mr. Junkin escorted them to Oxford, 
Chester County, the seat of the Rev. Dr. Dickey. Mean- 
while his intimacy with that family, and especially with 
the younger daughter, was maturing ; and the consumma- 
tion, which he so earnestly desired, was "engaged" to be 
made before he left Oxford. "I returned to Philadelphia 
with feelings of gratitude to God and love to her, which 
human language was not intended to express."* He re- 
sumed with diligence his missionary work in Philadelphia, 
and prosecuted it for some time. But when he more fully 
compared views in regard to the future, with the lady who 
was the chosen companion of his life, he found her judg- 
ment adverse to remaining in the city : she alleging that 
" she was unsuited to be the wife of a city pastor !" An es- 
timate of her qualifications which perhaps no human being, 
besides herself, who knew her, would make. None who 



7* 



7 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

knew her would have hesitated to pronounce her eminently 
fitted to such a position. But she was as modest of her 
abilities as she was eminent in every virtue and accom- 
plishment. Yet such was her judgment ; and partly influ- 
enced by this, and partly by the discouragements connected 
with the enterprise in which he was engaged in Philadel- 
phia, he began to look elsewhere for a permanent field of 
labor. 



CHAPTER X. 

Visit to Milton — Penuel Church — Resumes Work in Philadelphia — Visits 
his Western Home — Call to Mercer — Frank Response to People of Mil- 
ton — Marriage — Settlement at Milton. 

THERE was a small congregation of the Associate 
Reformed Church in the vicinity of Milton, North- 
umberland County, Pennsylvania, and several families at- 
tached to that church, living in and near that large and 
thriving borough, who had as yet no church organization. 
Having been invited to visit the place, he complied, and 
preached there for the first time on Sabbath, October 4, 
1818. 

The church edifice in which the organized congregation 
worshipped, was more than three miles from the town of 
Milton, and stood in a fine old pine forest, near to where 
the village of McEwensville now stands, — about the eighth 
of a mile south of it. It was a structure of hewn logs, 
about forty feet square, and, at the time of Mr. Junkin's 
advent, it was only roofed and floored, with windows and 
doors, but no gallery or pews. Subsequently it was fur- 
nished with pulpit, pews, and a gallery around three sides 
of the building, which last was reached by a flight of stairs 
constructed outside the walls of the building. These im- 
provements were made shortly after his settlement, and as 
the result of his activity. Further on in his ministry it 
was finished outside with white stucco and pebbles, and 
neatly plastered within. This building was a place of 
worship for some years after Dr. Junkin left the field, but 
was ultimately abandoned, removed, the beautiful grove 

(79) 



80 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

cut down, and now the plowshare is driven over its site. 
Though so far from the village of Milton, the families that 
lived in the village adhering to the A. R. Church, wor- 
shipped in this edifice, and hence the congregation was 
known as the congregation of Milton. But after Mr. 
Junkin was settled among them, he officiated part of the 
time in Milton, and, after an edifice was erected in the 
borough, the church near McEwensville was called, proba- 
bly at Mr. J.'s suggestion, Peniel, or more usually Penuel 
(see Gen. xxxii. 30-31), and the village church was called 
Shiloh. 

On the 4th day of October, 1818, being Sabbath, he 
preached twice in the Peniel church, in the morning from 
Acts xvi. 31, and in the afternoon from John iii. 36. On 
the Tuesday evening following, he preached his first sermon 
in the borough of Milton, from Isai. xxxiii. 14, last clause 
of the verse. On the afternoon of the 7th, he preached 
in White Deer Valley, on the west side of the Susquehanna, 
to a congregation that subsequently became a very inter- 
esting portion of his pastoral charge. On the 9th, he 
preached at Milton (Peniel), preparatory to the Lord's 
Supper; and on the nth, in the same place, when he ad- 
ministered the Lord's Supper, preaching the same evening 
in the village. He then returned to Philadelphia, and con- 
tinued his missionary work. From his preaching register, 
we ascertain that his stations for holding worship and 
preaching the Word, were numerous and widely extended. 
The church in Thirteenth Street was his centre of opera- 
tions. But, besides this, he had stations in Camden, 
Schuylkill Front, Moyamensing, and the Philadelphia 
Almshouse, and occasionally at the corner of Eleventh and 
Filbert Streets. These labors he continued until the 2 2d 
of November, when he left the city and made a visit to his 
friends in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, journeying via 
Baltimore, where he preached on the 27th of November, 



CALL TO MERCER. 8 1 

Chambersburg, and McConnellsburg, at each of which 
places he officiated on his way westward. 

Previous to his departure from Philadelphia on this 
journey, he had been informed that a call would be made 
by the people of Peniel and Milton for his pastoral ser- 
vices ; and, having decided to accept of this call, he deter- 
mined, before entering upon his pastoral duties, to make a 
general visit to his kindred. 

It was during this year that a call to the Associate Re- 
formed Churches of Mercer and Shenango, in Mercer 
County, Pa., was urgently pressed upon him. Early in 
the spring of 1818 this movement was made, as we gather 
from his correspondence; but in a letter dated July 19th 
of that year, and addressed to his brother-in-law, the Hon. 
John Findley, of Mercer, he assigns reasons why he de- 
clined acceding to the wishes of those congregations. In- 
deed, before the death of the first pastor of that charge, his 
brother-in-law, the Rev. James Galloway, but after that 
death became inevitable, Mr. Findley, who was a ruling 
elder, had written to him upon the subject, and was very 
importunate. Mr. Junkin's answers to these various letters 
are lost, but from the replies to them we learn, that the 
proverb that a "prophet is not without honor save in 
his own country and among his own kindred," was a domi- 
nant consideration with him in declining to enter that 
field. Another consideration was, that the Presbytery of 
Monongahela, by which he was licensed, and under the 
care of which the Mercer charge was, held views on the 
subject of catholic communion which Mr. Junkin could 
not adopt. They held to close communion, he repudiated 
that restriction. 

As an illustration of the earnestness with which his labors 
were sought by the people of Mercer, and as a rather curious 
specimen of logic and Scripture interpretation, a few ex- 
tracts from one of the letters (from Mr. Findley) are given : 



82 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIX. 

"I shall now endeavor to convince you that your ob- 
jections are not sufficient ; nay, that your basing your 
determination upon that text, ' a prophet is not without 
honor,' etc., is setting it in direct opposition to the con- 
duct of our Saviour himself and that of his Apostles. He 
and they did preach the gospel among their own kindred. 
He continued to labor and preach the gospel in his own 
city until the inhabitants rejected him, cast him out, and 
sought to destroy him ; and it was in reference to this he 
quoted this proverb. He spent his whole ministerial labors 
among his kindred according to the flesh; and so did they, 
until he sent them, by providential indications, to present it 

to the Gentiles also Many of our ministers are 

settled in the congregation in which they were raised, — Dr. 
Mason, Mr. Lind, Mr. Henderson, and others ; and who 
are more respected by their flocks, and who are more use- 
ful in their generation? .... We have had preaching 
only once since Mr. G.'s death. Mr. F. administered the 
Lord's Supper. If we remain in this state, what ruin and 
desolation must result ! My four sons are growing up with- 
out the benefit of the preached gospel, — your brothers, 
your brother's children, and many others, are in like con- 
dition ; and if you were here, many of these young plants 
might be brought into the vineyard, and some raised up 
under your ministry to preach the glad tidings of salvation 

to others Pardon me if I am moved to tears in 

view of our situation." 

This letter was dated September 20, 1818. 

After he had determined to leave Philadelphia, and after 
the people of Milton had expressed a desire to obtain his 
services, he wrote to an elder of that church a frank and 
explicit statement of the conditions upon which he would 
be willing to accede to their wishes. After stating that, 
so far as providential indications showed, he felt it his 
duty to enter that field, this letter proceeds : 

"And that there be no misunderstanding, let me tell 
you that I must live by the gospel. I intend to spend all 
my time and talents in your service, and to obey the 
divine command, 'Give thyself wholly unto these things;' 



CALL TO MILTON. 



33 



and, therefore, I expect you (I mean the people whose call 
I shall accept) to hear and obey the command, ' muzzle 
not the ox that treadeth out the corn;' 'the laborer is 
worthy of his hire.' .... It is to be understood that I 
am to preach half the time in the village and half the time 
in the church (the Pines); I cannot think of being officially 
connected with more than two places, though I have not 
such strong objections to a preaching excursion occasion- 
ally into the neighboring country You have my 

mind, — you have it plainly. Do as your sense of duty 
shall dictate. But this remember, that, although you have 
not a certainty, yet it comes as near to a certainty as human 
affairs will permit, of obtaining a man to break the bread 
of life to your hungry souls, if you meet his wishes by min- 
istering to him in carnal things ; and, oh ! as you value your 
souls, and the souls of your children, remember, if God has 
given you the opportunity and the means, and you neglect 
both, you shall answer for it at the great day of the Re- 
deemer's appearing. Accordingly, I expect you to pro- 
ceed immediately to business ; and if you find yourselves 
strong enough, — that is, willing enough, to feed and clothe 
this body (and God knows I want nothing more than a 
support), appear at Presbytery by a commissioner, and 
petition for the moderation of a call. But in the mean 
time let me know your purposes. I am in trim for action, 
and must act promptly. Importunate and reiterated cries 
from the congregation where my aged father and all my 
kindred are, wring tears from these eyes and blood from 
this heart ; but a ' prophet hath no honor in his own 
country.' I cannot and will not go, if a door is opened 
with you." .... 

In pursuance of the suggestions made in this letter, a 
call was made out by the people of Milton. The Pres- 
bytery of Philadelphia (A. R.) appointed the Rev. C. G. 
McLean to moderate it, and it was done on the 15th of 
March, 1819. In the extracts made from this letter we see 
indices of that frankness, explicitness, and honesty which 
were always characteristic of the man, whilst we have 
proof that the little flock, that lay scattered in and around 



84 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Milton, was in an inchoate condition, needing direc- 
tion in the forms of procedure, and needing a forming 
hand to shape them into an energetic church organi- 
zation. 

After writing the foregoing letter, dated November 2d, 
1818, Mr. Junkin made the journey to the West, alluded 
to above. In the progress of the journey, he preached 
the gospel in many places, and with much frequency. 
Besides the places already named, he preached seven times 
in Mercer County, once in Steubenville, Ohio, four times 
in Pittsburg, and three times on his return journey. Where- 
ever he was expected to preach, whether on the Sabbath or 
other days of the week, crowds came to hear him. The 
writer of this was a small boy at the time, but he retains a 
distinct recollection of the wide-spread and deep impres- 
sion made by his sermons during this visit, and he has 
heard the old people speaking of it many years after- 
wards. 

He spent most part of the month of December in Mer- 
cer County, Pennsylvania, and at the beginning of the 
year 181 9 went to Steubenville to visit his sister Mary, the 
wife of the Rev. George Buchanan. In this visit he was 
accompanied by his venerable father, who came with him 
to Pittsburg, where he preached in his friend McElroy's 
pulpit on the 8th, 9th, 10th, and nth of January. From 
Pittsburg he went to Franklin County, thence back to Mc- 
Connellsburg, and thence across the country. In the pro- 
gress of this journey he mentions having lodged at the 

house of the Rev. Mr. , "one of our ministers who 

followed stilling whiskey." He preached three Sabbaths, 
the last of January and the first two of February, 181 9, at 
the Milton charge, one sermon in the Presbyterian congre- 
gation of Warrior Run, and then returned to Philadelphia. 
He does not appear to have entered upon labor in his 
former missionary field, having, as is supposed, terminated 



MARRIAGE. 



85 



his connection with it the preceding November, although 
he preached often in Camden. 

In March, 1819, we find him again on the Susquehanna, 
preaching in the Milton charge, and various other places 
in the region. But he returned to Philadelphia early in 
May. 

On the 1st of June, 1819, he was married to Miss Julia 
Rush Miller, daughter of John and Margaret Miller, of Phil- 
adelphia. The marriage was solemnized by his venerated 
Professor, Dr. Mason. 

Mr. Miller and his wife were natives of Scotland, — she 
Margaret Irvin, — and both descended from families of 
highly respectable social position. Mr. Miller had died 
previous to the marriage of his daughter. He had been a 
ruling elder in the Scots' Presbyterian Church, and a man 
of wealth, enterprise, and enlarged benevolence and public 
spirit. On terms of close intimacy with the celebrated 
Dr. Rush, he co-operated with that eminent philanthro- 
pist in many of the public charities of the city, and was 
distinguished for his courageous and self-denying labors 
with the sick and distressed during the visits of that terrible 
scourge — the yellow fever. Remaining in the city whilst 
others fled, he contributed by his means and his personal at- 
tentions to alleviate the distress and horrors of those awful 
calamities. He was prominent in the establishment of 
the almshouse, the hospital, and other charitable insti- 
tutions of the city, and was recognized as one of its 
benefactors. 

The next day after their marriage, they set out upon a 
visit to her relatives in Oxford and Gettysburg. From 
Gettysburg he went to Washington City, where he preached 
on the 26th of June. Returning to Gettysburg, they pro- 
ceeded thence to Milton, where he entered upon the duties 
of his pastorate. 

Their " own hired house" was not thoroughly completed 



86 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

when they entered it; and for Mrs. Junkin, accustomed, as 
she had been, to the spacious apartments and the various 
appliances of human comfort, for which Philadelphia has 
always been remarkable, the change must have been great ; 
but she conformed to it with that lovely Christian cheerful- 
ness which formed an ornament of her character. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Pastorate at Milton — State of the Churches — Pastors Hood, Bryson, Patter- 
son, Smith, and Grier — Installation — Sabbath-School, Tract, Bible, and 
Temperance Labors — Barriers— General Montgomery — Union of A. R. 
Church with General Assembly — Joins the Presbytery of Northumber- 
land — Shiloh. 

IN order to appreciate the results of Mr. Junkin's labors 
and influence during the eleven years of his pastorate 
at Milton, it is necessary to have an adequate knowledge 
of the state of religion and of the churches at the time of 
his advent to the Susquehanna region. Whilst there were 
some faithful and earnest men in the Presbyterian churches 
of that region, there was a deplorable amount of formalism 
pervading the masses. Mr. Junkin's charge was the only 
one within seventy miles of Milton that was connected 
with the Associate Reformed Church. And although there 
were isolated families and some small clusters of people, 
scattered through the surrounding counties that preferred 
that organization, they were not of sufficient numbers to 
be organized into churches, and they usually worshipped 
with the Presbyterian congregations. This state of things 
called for frequent excursions to preach in the regions be- 
yond his immediate pastoral charge. That charge covered 
the same territory with the Presbyterian congregations of 
Milton and Warrior Run ; the former under the pastoral 
care of the Rev. Thomas Hood, the latter under that of 
the venerable Rev. John Bryson, even then almost an 
octogenarian. The lovely and beloved Rev. John B. Pat- 
terson was pastor of the united churches of Derry and 
Mahoning (Danville), the Rev. William R. Smith over 
those of Sunbury and Northumberland, and the venerable 

(8 7 ) 



88 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

Rev. John Grier, of Pine Creek. Mr. Junkin found his 
own particular charge in a cold and formal state. Orthodox, 
and affected with a hereditary zeal for the peculiarities of 
their denomination, especially for " the Psalms of David 
in metre," there existed between them and the other 
branch of the Presbyterian family a mutual prejudice that 
restrained them from co-operation. Family worship was 
kept up in some families, but in many it was neglected. 
Discipline had rarely been exercised, and the standard of 
Christian morality was low, and that of piety and active 
efforts for souls still lower. And this description was 
equally true of most of the congregations in that region 
in connection with the General Assembly. Indeed, disci- 
pline in nearly all the churches was sadly relaxed, and 
the lines between the church and the world but dimly 
drawn. Whiskey drinking was almost universal. A funeral 
even could not be conducted without the circulation of the 
bottle and the tumbler. Elders of the church deemed it 
not inconsistent with their Christian profession or their 
official position, to engage in the manufacture and sale of 
whiskey. The sacraments of the church were approached 
by many whose profession of piety was not attested by the 
commonest indices of conversion. The masses were at 
ease in Zion. The sacrament of baptism was claimed for 
children, neither of whose parents was a communicant in 
the church, and a morbid public sentiment sanctioned the 
claim, and compelled the ministers, either to baptize pro- 
miscuously, or to encounter opposition of a serious char- 
acter. At the time of his entrance upon this field, there 
was no church organization in Milton Borough, and no 
house of worship belonging to the people whom he served. 
When he officiated in the village, he preached in a large 
schoolhouse in the winter season, and in the summer in a 
hewn log-house, that had been built north of the town for 
an Episcopal church. It had been floored and fitted up 



INSTALLATION. 



89 



with deep, old-fashioned pews, but had never been ceiled, 
and, at the time he occupied it, the roof was decayed, so 
that, except in pleasant weather, it was not a secure shelter. 
His chief station, and where most of the church members 
lived, was at " The Pines," the place already described as 
Peniel, in Turbot Township, three miles north of the 
Borough. 

Such was his first permanent field of labor. His taking 
a station in the Borough of Milton excited at first some 
little jealousy and opposition from a part of the Presbyte- 
rian congregation, who enjoyed the ministrations of the 
Rev. Mr. Hood every alternate Sabbath. But this feeling 
soon abated after the people became better acquainted with 
Mr. Junkin, and learned to appreciate his catholic spirit, 
and the earnestness and ability of his labors in the cause of 
Christ. And as the Presbyterian congregation had but 
half of their pastor's time, and he lived several miles in 
the country, with the river, then unbridged, between his 
residence and the village, much of the pastoral work, such 
as visiting the sick, soon fell to Mr. J., and many of the 
people attended upon his preaching, which never inter- 
fered, in point of time, with that of Mr. Hood. And, 
indeed, there soon arose a delightful state of fellowship 
between the members of the two congregations, and no 
collision or misunderstanding ever occurred between the 
pastors. 

On the 17th of October, 1819, he was installed pastor 
by the A. R. Presbytery of Philadelphia j Dr. C. G. Mc- 
Lean, Dr. McCartee, Dr. Duncan, and the Rev. Messrs. 
Lind and Gibson being present and taking part in the 
solemnities of the occasion. But before his formal instal- 
lation, he had entered upon the duties of his pastorate with 
that zeal and energy which was never relaxed until the 
hand of death was laid upon him, nearly half a century 
afterwards. 

8* 



9 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Having taken part, when a student, in the organization 
of the first Sabbath-schools established in New York, he 
was not long in inaugurating them in his new field of labor. 
And such was his thorough comprehension of the principles 
and methods upon which these schools should be conducted, 
and such was his skill in introducing system, and adapting 
means to the end, that the schools in his charge were models, 
and, indeed, such good models, that fifty years' experience 
has made little advance upon the system inaugurated by 
him at Milton. 

He also introduced the Bible-class, then a new mode of 
pastoral usefulness, and in it he shortly trained a corps of 
very efficient Sabbath-school teachers. He was methodical 
in all his labors. He early announced to his people, that 
he desired his mornings to be uninterrupted, that they 
might be devoted to study. He requested to be exempt 
from calls until after twelve o'clock ; after that hour he was 
accessible. But in case of sickness he was ready to re- 
spond to calls at any hour of the day or night. 

"I had not much aid from the eldership of the church. 
I never heard but one of them offer prayer in family or 
in public. Piety was a dull flame with all except that 
one (Mr. Russell), and he resided beyond the Susque- 
hanna. Indeed, this was the case at first with nearly all 
the church members except a few women. And there 
was very little active piety, either in town or country. 
There was no prayer-meeting in any congregation in 
the vicinity except in Milton. There we began a little 
meeting in private houses, at which a few males and a 
score of females attended. William Housel, a watch- 
maker, and a member of Mr. Hood's charge, was the 
chief auxiliary. In White Deer Valley the prospect was 
more cheering. That was the most fruitful part of my 
field, for, although I was never pastor of the congregation 
in that valley, I labored a portion of the time in it, and 
with much comfort and success."* 



Rem. 



TRACT, BIBLE, AND TEMPERANCE LABORS. 



91 



Mr. Junkin never received an adequate support from the 
people to whom he ministered. They had promised him in 
his call a competency, but he rarely realized more than 
half of what was promised. The people seemed to take it 
for granted that, having means independent of them, they 
need not make exertion to maintain their pastor. 

The fact, that he and his charge were so isolated and far 
removed from other churches and pastors of his denomina- 
tion, very greatly restricted his usefulness; and the other 
fact, that the Associate Reformed Church confined their 
people to the use of the " Psalms of David in metre," as 
versified by Sir Francis Rouse, was another hindrance. 
When he consented, in the fourth year of his ministry, to 
supply the congregation of White Deer, he was constrained 
to stipulate that they should use these Psalms exclusively. 
They had been accustomed to use the collection of Psalms 
and Hymns generally used in the Presbyterian churches, 
but, for the sake of obtaining his services, they con- 
sented to the change. But notwithstanding these hin- 
drances, his usefulness steadily increased, and the range of 
his influence was extended. His services were sought and 
were rendered in many places beside those in which he 
statedly ministered. In Lewisburg, Hartleton, New Berlin, 
and Mifflinburg, in Union County, and in Muncy, in 
Lycoming County, he often preached, laying foundations 
upon which, in some cases, thriving churches were after- 
wards built. In the last-named place he for a long time 
maintained a Wednesday lecture, or preaching service. 

Mr. Junkin early threw himself, his energies and means, 
into those co-operative efforts in which evangelical Chris- 
tians have united, — the Bible, the Tract, the Sabbath- 
school, and the Temperance enterprises. In all these he 
soon became the recognized leader in the region that lies 
around the Forks of the Susquehanna. At the time of Mr. 
Junkin's advent to Milton, that eminent Christian and 



9 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

philanthropist, General Daniel Montgomery, of Danville, 
was living, and in the height of his usefulness. He was 
soon attracted to the young "seceder," as the denomina- 
tion of Mr. Junkin was sometimes called; and recognizing 
and appreciating his talents, learning, energy, and zeal, he 
was forward in giving to him that position in the religious 
enterprises of the region for which those qualifications 
adapted him. A friendship soon sprung up between these 
eminent men, which grew with years, and only terminated 
with the General's life. It was on General Montgomery's 
motion, that Mr. Junkin's first address before the Susque- 
hanna Bible Society was published ; and this address did 
much to stimulate and encourage the friends of the Bible 
cause, whilst it drew attention to its author as a man of 
ability and Christian enterprise.* 

The Susquehanna Bible Society, auxiliary to the Penn- 
sylvania Bible Society, was, during Mr. Junkin's residence 
in Milton, the most efficient society in the Commonwealth, 
out of Philadelphia. It pledged and it effected the thorough 
supply of four large counties with the Holy Scriptures, 
and sent a handsome surplus to the parent society. It 
was established upon the federative principle, — a general 
society, with auxiliaries, called Bible Associations, in town- 
ships and smaller districts. So energetic was Mr. J. in 
inaugurating this plan, that he personally organized no less 
than thirty-two of these associations in a few months. 
The S. B. S. held anniversary meetings in the larger towns, 
— Milton, Danville, Northumberland, Sunbury, and Wil- 



* A lady, who was present at the delivery of this address, has informed 
the writer that, during its delivery, the venerable Rev. J. B. Patterson, who 
was in the pulpit with Mr. Junkin, was so affected that he rose to his feet, 
apparently unconscious of what he was doing, and took a position where 
he could see the speaker's face, and leaned towards him in an attitude of 
intense attention and delight ; and that the whole assembly spontaneously 
leaned forward as if spell-bound by the speaker's power. 



A. R. CHURCH AND GENERAL ASSEMBL Y UNITE. 



93 



liamsport, to which the associations sent deputations ; and 
these anniversaries were occasions of great religious and 
social interest, and contributed very efficiently to spread 
valuable thought and intelligence, and to rouse and sustain 
a Christian zeal and enterprise, that had never previously 
existed in that region. He not only infused his own spirit 
and zeal into others, and brought them up to work for the 
cause, but he was himself a hard worker. He travelled and 
toiled much, and at his own charges, in advancing the 
cause. He was not one of those whose zeal and industry 
in Christ's cause were all expended in an oration upon the 
boards of an anniversary ; he labored personally, and con- 
tributed liberally, to urge forward every enterprise that 
seemed to him scriptural and right. 

At the sessions of the General Assembly and of the Gen- 
eral Synod of the Associate Reformed Church, held in 
Philadelphia in May, 1822, a union was consummated be- 
tween the two bodies. The proposal for this union was 
made by the General Assembly a year previous. These 
were favorably received by the Synod then in session in the 
same city. Committees of conference were appointed. A 
basis of union was agreed upon ; and at the time mentioned, 
both bodies adopted the basis, and the Synod met with the 
Assembly, and enjoyed a delightful season of fraternal fel- 
lowship. By the terms of the basis of union, it was left 
optional with the Presbyteries of the Associate Reformed 
Church, either to retain their organization and attach 
themselves to the most convenient Synod under the Gen- 
eral Assembly, or to dissolve and their several members 
and churches unite with the Presbyteries within whose 
bounds they might be located. " In the former case, they 
shall have as full powers and privileges as any other Pres- 
byteries in the united body." Some of the Presbyteries 
retained their organization, as the Second Presbytery of 
New York. Others pursued the latter alternative, and be- 



94 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

came amalgamated with the Presbyteries most convenient 
to the ministers and churches severally. The Presbytery to 
which Mr. Junkin belonged, the A. R. Presbytery of Phila- 
delphia, appears to have retained a separate existence for a 
short time; but in the years 1824-5, they perfected their 
arrangements for a dissolution, and united with the Pres- 
byteries most convenient. This Presbytery extended over 
a large territory, including in its limits Philadelphia, Bal- 
timore, Washington, D.C., Carlisle, Hagerstown, and 
McConnellsburg. Some of the ministers and churches fell 
into the bounds of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, others 
into that of Baltimore, others to Carlisle, others to New 
Castle, and Mr. Junkin and his congregations into the 
Presbytery of Northumberland. This change of Church 
and Presbyterial connection greatly enlarged his sphere 
of influence and of usefulness. He was located near the 
geographical centre of the Presbytery, in its then largest 
town, and among its most enterprising people. 

He was received by the Presbytery of Northumberland 
with a large and cordial welcome. He was already known 
to them as an able and earnest worker. In the intercourse 
incident to the meeting of the Bible Society and other co- 
operative efforts, they had learned his worth as a warm- 
hearted and energetic champion of every good cause ; and 
they soon, as by common consent, seemed to recognize 
him as their leader in every good work. On his part, he 
at once identified himself with the interests of the whole 
Presbytery and of the whole denomination with which his 
lot was now cast ; and he entered into their work as if he 
never had been an alien, and with all the ardor of his 
earnest nature. 

About a year after his arrival at Milton, he purchased 
half an acre of ground in a pleasant and convenient loca- 
tion, and, with the aid of the citizens, built a small and 
comfortable place of worship. This he named Shiloh, and 



SHILOH. 



95 



here he officiated almost every Sabbath, preaching in the 
evenings of those Sabbaths on the mornings of which he had 
labored in the country portions of his charge. Mr. Hood 
rarely preached more than in the daylight of the Sabbath, 
so that the evening service in Shiloh, and the alternate 
Sabbath-morning service, did not interfere with the minis- 
trations in the other Presbyterian church. At that time the 
Presbyterian congregation occupied a building of rather 
imposing appearance, which they had built in connection 
with two German congregations, the Lutheran and the 
German Reformed. Of course they were entitled to use it 
but one-half of the time, which excluded them every alter- 
nate Sabbath. 

In "Shiloh" Mr. Junkin gathered a considerable congre- 
gation, and there he preached for eleven years those pre- 
cious doctrines of grace, of which, in later life, he became 
the defender, both through the press and in the church 
courts. Besides a sermon each day, he usually had a series 
of expository lectures in progress, in which he expounded 
book after book of the Scriptures. These were attended 
upon by large numbers of interested and intelligent people ; 
and it might be truly said of him, more than of most min- 
isters, in the language of McCheyne, that he "made the 
people understand the Bible." In these expository dis- 
courses he began to array material, which, later in life, and 
with more mature study, he embodied in works which he 
prepared for the press. In Shiloh his lectures upon the 
Epistle to the Hebrews were first delivered, as also his appli- 
cation of the lessons of the Mosaic ritual to the elucidation 
of New-Testament truth, and some of his lectures on the 
prophecies. 

After his union with the Presbytery of Northumberland, 
he continued to use, as a general thing, in his own churches, 
the old version of the Psalms. This he did, not because 
he had conscientious scruples against using other sacred 



9 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

songs, but because many of his people, especially the more 
aged, preferred the Psalmody to which they had so long 
been accustomed. But in the prayer-meetings, Sabbath- 
schools, and when officiating in churches where other hym- 
nology had been introduced, he was glad to use the Psalms 
and Hymns of Watts and others. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Pastorate at Milton, continued — A Reformer — Labors in the Temperance 
Reform — Rum at Funerals — His Protest — Presbyterial Action — Oppo- 
sition — His Steadfastness — -Beecher's Lectures — Chambers's Medicine — 
Early Educational Labors — Milton Academy — Dr. Kirkpatrick — Wide- 
spread Usefulness of that School— Its Distinguished Pupils. 

THE subject of this memoir soon found himself sur- 
rounded by a band of warm-hearted, Christian 
people, ready to co-operate with him in the work of the 
Lord. But it was not to be expected that this work could 
make marked progress without encountering opposition. 
Nor was it to be expected that a man of such decided con- 
victions and pronounced character could take the lead in 
works of reformation without becoming, to some extent, 
the target at which the shafts of the enemy would be espe- 
cially aimed. It has been already stated, that a condition 
of things, somewhat analogous to the moderatism of the 
Church of Scotland, pervaded the congregations in the 
region of his labors. In his own charge, and in many 
others, there was a large amount of practical antinomianism. 
Worldly conformity marked the conduct of most professors 
of religion ; many vices abounded in the community, such 
as intemperance, gambling, Sabbath-desecration, and pro- 
fanity ; and all these arrayed themselves against the efforts 
made for the revival of spiritual piety. Even church mem- 
bers, in many cases, resented and resisted the inroads at- 
tempted to be made upon the cold formalism that palsied 
the churches. But regardless of all opposition, from what- 
ever quarter it came, Mr. Junkin steadily persisted in efforts 
at the much-needed reform. He poured forth from the 
pulpit faithful, earnest, and affectionate remonstrances and 
entreaties. He rallied the friends of religion and good 
9 (97) 



9 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

order, and led them on in assaults upon prevailing evils, 
whilst he held forth the gospel as the grand remedy for all 
the ills of society. 

The temperance reformation had not yet assumed the 
aspect and the vantage which it gained a few years later. 
He took ground in advance of any general movement that 
had as yet been made. We have seen, that before he left 
the Theological Seminary he had privately taken, substan- 
tially, the Nazarite's vow, so far as intoxicating drink is 
concerned. He had refused the first call made for his pas- 
toral services, chiefly because whiskey-drinking was so prev- 
alent in the congregation. And, when settled in a pastoral 
charge, he early commenced an earnest crusade against 
intemperance, a crusade that ended only with his life. 

Before any temperance society was thought of in his 
region, he practised and preached total abstinence. His 
first public demonstration against the bottle was a refusal to 
attend any funeral where strong drink was exhibited. On 
one occasion he attended the funeral of a neighbor not 
of his flock, but when the bottle made its appearance he 
withdrew, and, although followed by a brother minister 
and urged to return, he persisted in withdrawing, and thus 
protesting against a custom that he deemed to be alike dis- 
honoring to the dead and injurious to the living. Soon 
after becoming a member of the Presbytery of Northum- 
berland, he presented a set of resolutions upon this sub- 
ject, and secured the adoption of them. One of these 
resolutions was, that the members of the Presbytery would 
not attend or officiate at any funeral at which spirituous 
liquors should be offered to the guests. This was probably 
the first definite and effective action taken in this country 
by any ecclesiastical body against the monster vice of in- 
temperance. For, although Synods and Assemblies had oc- 
casionally uttered warnings against the sin of intemperance, 
and borne testimony against it, no means of practical effi- 



LABORS IN THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 



99 



ciency had been suggested for arresting the progress of the 
destroyer. The discipline of the church, it is true, had 
sometimes been brought to bear upon the crime of drunk- 
enness, but this always came too late as a remedy, for the 
fatal disease is contracted, and the dangerous habit formed, 
before the individual becomes, by overt transgression, the 
subject of church censure. There was need of some more 
effective protest against, not the sin merely, but the cause of 
the sin, which lay in the use of intoxicating beverages. 
This protest Mr. Junkin made in the form already men- 
tioned, and he persisted in the protest, in connection with 
his brethren of the Presbytery, until the custom of exhib- 
iting liquor at funerals was entirely broken up, not only in 
Presbyterian families, but very generally throughout the 
community. 

Nor was he contented with this measure of opposition to 
intemperance and its cause. In private and in public, 
orally and with his pen, he continued to "reprove, re- 
buke, and exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine." 
About the time he began the temperance work at Milton, 
the able and celebrated Dr. Lyman Beecher had begun it 
in Boston and New England. That eminent man delivered 
a series of " Lectures on Intemperance," which were pub- 
lished in a small volume, and which were marked by the 
vigor of thought and pungency of appeal that were pecu- 
liar to their author. These lectures Mr. Junkin procured and 
endeavored to circulate. But finding the people slow to 
buy and read them, he made appointments of public meet- 
ings, and read these lectures to them, with occasional re- 
marks of his own. Great numbers attended these readings, 
and these were the first " temperance meetings" held in the 
Susquehanna region. The fact that a man of Mr. Junkin's 
acknowledged ability would read the lectures of another, 
is proof, that it was the cause he had at heart, and not the 
winning of personal eclat. 



ioo LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

So uncompromising was his hostility to intemperance, 
and so deep his sympathy and concern for the inebriate, 
that he seized upon every auxiliary of reform. About that 
time, a certain Dr. Chambers had invented, as he professed, 
a remedy for intemperance, of a medicinal kind. " Cham- 
bers's Remedy for Intemperance" was, for a time, much in 
vogue, and, in some cases, did appear to effect reform, by 
producing in the patient disgust for liquor. But its efficacy 
appeared to depend upon the law of association, and, by 
producing intense nausea, associated that nausea with the 
liquor in which the medicine was infused. Mr. Junkin 
heard of this remedy, procured a quantity of it, and, some- 
times with the consent of the victim, sometimes without 
his knowledge, but with the consent of his family, attempted 
to exorcise the demon. In many cases there was temporary 
deliverance from the destroying appetite ; in a few cases, 
permanent rescue. But, after a short-lived popularity, the 
remedy, like many other nostrums, proved a failure. Many 
of the scenes connected with the exhibition of " Cham- 
bers's Remedy" were ludicrous in the extreme, especially 
when the patients, or the victims, did not know that they 
had drunk anything but their favorite beverage in its 
purity. The physical commotion produced was indeed 
alarming, and was well calculated to frighten and disgust 
the unfortunate into abstinence. 

It may excite surprise that such a remedy for intemper- 
ance should gain such extensive popularity, and that men 
so judicious as Dr. Junkin, and many others of his brethren 
in the ministry, should lend themselves to its distribution. 
But if it be remembered, that drunkenness is a disease of the 
stomach and nervous system, as well as a sin, we need not 
wonder that earnest philanthropists would seize upon any 
physical remedy (coming from a respectable medical source, 
and commended, as it was, by great names) that might prom- 
ise to eradicate a habit so ruinous to soul, body, and estate. 



OPPOSITION. IO i 

Mr. Junkin's family physician was a gentleman of fine 
talents, good education, and of eminent skill in his pro- 
fession. He was, withal, a man of generous impulses, kind 
heart, and fine social qualities. But he was likely to fall 
before this destroyer, who had slain so many strong men. 
This physician and his family attended upon Mr. Junkin's 
ministrations ; and a close intimacy subsisted between the 
families. The pastor's regard for the gifted yet tempted 
physician was intensified by the assiduous care and skill 
which the latter bestowed upon him during the only very 
serious illness of his life, previous to his last. With God's 
blessing, the pastor's life was spared, and, after his recovery, 
he showed his gratitude by writing to the physician a series 
of letters, eight in number, couched in the most earnest, 
pungent, and affectionate terms, remonstrating and reason- 
ing with him upon the subject of his dangerous and sinful 
habit. We may again recur to this correspondence, and 
only mention it here as illustrative of the indefatigable 
zeal and unshrinking faithfulness with which Mr. J. sought 
to snatch souls as brands from that terrible burning. 

Before dismissing the subject of his labors, at Milton 
and elsewhere, in the temperance reformation, it may as 
well be stated that, after he became an editor, the columns 
of the periodical which he issued contained from time to 
time strong articles in advocacy of that reform. He 
assailed the evil in all its phases. He was among the 
first, if not the first, to attack the manufacture and traffic 
of intoxicating drinks. He assailed the social habits of 
the people, that required the bottle and the glass to be put 
to the neighbor's mouth. He bore down upon the custom, 
then and still too prevalent, of using liquor as the agent 
of bribery at elections. Of course these assaults upon the 
enemy drew their fire, which came, not in the form of 
argument, for of this they had none, but in the shape of 
discontinuances of his paper, abusive letters, both anony- 
9* 



jo2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

mous and with names, coarse attacks in the secular papers, 
petty personal annoyances, and, in a few cases, discontin- 
uance of social comities. A prominent politician and 
military gentleman, who afterwards figured in the Mexican 
War, and was brought home from it dead, took intense um- 
brage at an article headed " Whiskey Bribery," and sent a 
curt and cross note discontinuing the paper, and assigning 
as a reason the article in question. This led to a sharp 
correspondence, in which the reverend editor boldly main- 
tained his ground, and in which the soldier proved that 
the pen was possibly less puissant with him than the sword. 
All these things, whilst they perhaps occasioned the cham- 
pion of temperance pecuniary loss, and some personal 
annoyance, nevertheless aroused the public mind to inquiry 
and consideration, spread true principles, and prepared the 
way for the triumph of that cause in which he was a suffer- 
ing laborer. 

Gambling, horse-racing, Sabbath-breaking, profanity, 
and all those vices that feed upon the master vice of 
intemperance, received a due proportion of the reformer's 
attention, both from press, pulpit, and rostrum ; and, as a 
matter of course, the practicers and abettors of these vices, 
when not convinced and converted from the errors of their 
ways, were roused to fierce opposition. This opposition 
did not always vent itself in mere curses, but resorted to 
various petty annoyances and private injuries. On one 
occasion the gamblers sent an unsuspecting negro man to 
Mr. Junkin's house, during his absence, to ask for a pack 
of cards ; and this was a moderate specimen of the means 
resorted to by the sons of Belial. "But none of these 
things moved him." When his friends would sometimes 
tremble for his safety, and express anxiety for the results 
of his bold assaults upon prevailing sins, he would calmly 
smile at their fears, bid them have patience and trust in 
God ; and, in regard to the misrepresentations to which 



MILTON ACADEMY. 103 

the gainsayers often resorted, would quietly quote the 
Proverb (xii. 19), "the lying tongue is but for a moment." 
Indeed, throughout his whole life, this and similar Scrip- 
ture assurances seemed to be his shield against the voice 
of slander; and such was his implicit confidence in such por- 
tions of the Holy Word, that he never was as much moved 
or vexed by misrepresentation as most other men are. 

But whilst his labors in his own charge, and in the cause 
of the Bible, the Sabbath, the Sabbath-school, the Tract 
Society, and the Temperance reform, were various, ample, 
and indefatigable, other Christian and philanthropic enter- 
prises received at the same time a large share of his atten- 
tion and his toil. Although he had as yet no children of 
his own of suitable age to educate, he early inaugurated 
measures to improve the facilities for education in the com- 
munity in which he lived. He found the schools in a very 
backward and imperfect condition, and soon began to 
agitate for their improvement. By conversation, by pulpit 
instruction, and by occasional appeals through the press, 
he succeeded in awakening an interest in the subject, and in 
forming a joint-stock company, for the purpose of estab- 
lishing an English, Mathematical, and Classical Academy. 
He was himself a liberal subscriber, and the movement re- 
sulted in the founding of the celebrated ' ' Milton Academy, ' ' 
which, under the principalship of that renowned teacher, 
the late Rev. David Kirkpatrick, D.D., was a very popular 
and effective school. 

Mr. Kirkpatrick, a native of the North of Ireland, a 
student of Belfast Collegiate Institution, and a graduate of 
the University of Glasgow, was employed for a short time 
teaching a classical school in Oxford, Chester County, Pa., 
under the auspices of the Rev. Dr. Dickey, the brother-in- 
law of Mr. Junkin. There the last-named made the ac- 
quaintance of the young Scotch-Irishman, and induced 
him to come to Milton and become the Principal of the 



104 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

incipient academy. Pending the erection of the academy- 
building, which was located upon an eminence, beautiful 
for situation, east of the village, temporary accommoda- 
tions for the school were hired ; and the institution opened 
under very favorable prospects. It soon rose into distinc- 
tion, and not only retained that portion of the youth of 
the town who formerly were sent abroad for instruction, but 
attracted students from distant parts of the Commonwealth, 
and from other States. Perhaps no institution of the kind, 
with such a meagre expenditure of funds in its establish- 
ment, ever accomplished a larger measure of educational 
benefit. This was chiefly owing to the efficiency and skill 
of the Principal and his assistants ; but the influence of the 
subject of this memoir was constantly exerted, not only in 
founding it, but in sustaining its discipline and thorough- 
ness of drill, in extending its fame, and in bringing 
students to its classes. His frequent visits to the school, 
and his unflagging interest in its welfare, did much to sus- 
tain and encourage the Principal, and to encourage the 
pupils. The Principal of the school and the pastor of the 
church became close friends, — a friendship that terminated 
only with their lives. They died in the same year. 

It is impossible to measure, by any human standard of 
calculation, the influences for good which Mr. Junkin set 
in operation when he succeeded in inaugurating the Milton 
Academy. Streams, for many years, continued to issue 
from that fountain, that refreshed the country and distant 
parts of the world, whilst they made glad the city of our 
God. Not only was it a religious and educational ad- 
vantage to the community in which it was located, but 
also to distant communities in our own country, to distant 
continents and islands of the sea. Asia, Africa, Europe, 
America, and the Pacific Islands have felt, and still feel, 
the influence of that unpretending institution. 

The first missionary to Arkansas; one of the first mis- 



DISTINGUISHED PUP IIS. 



i°5 



sionaries of the Presbyterian Church to Africa ; a mission- 
ary to the Sandwich Islands, the man who more than any 
other shaped the educational and governmental systems of 
those islands — many ministers of the gospel of eminence, 
many eminent lawyers and statesmen, many eminent phy- 
sicians, and — what is not the least important in regard to 
wide-spread usefulness — many eminent teachers, were edu- 
cated at that academy, and mostly under the ministerial 
influence of Mr. Junkin. 

That academy gave two Governors to Pennsylvania, 
Pollock and Curtin, the latter of whom is now Ambassador 
at the Court of Russia. It gave a Professor of Natural 
Philosophy to the University of Georgia, a President to 
the College of South Carolina, Charles F. McCay, LL.D., 
and a Professor of Belles-Lettres to Lafayette College. It 
gave to the State and the country such men as Judge Comly 
and Judge Naudain, with Senators and Congressmen who 
adorned their station ; and it gave to the church such men 
as J. W. Moore, Matthew Laird, the first missionary to 
Western Africa, Dr. Richard Armstrong, missionary to the 
Sandwich Islands, and Minister of Public Instruction for 
that kingdom, and who did perhaps more for its civiliza- 
tion than any other ; Dr. John M. Dickey, a useful pastor, 
and the chief founder of Lincoln University ; Dr. S. S. 
Sheddan, of New Jersey ; Rev. J. Mason Galloway, late of 
Clearfield; Dr. George Marshall, an eminent pastor and 
educator, of Western Pennsylvania; the late Rev. Robt. 
Bryson ; the Rev. P. B. Marr, a preacher of great ability; 
Rev. Daniel M. Barber; Rev. Daniel Gaston, late of Phila- 
delphia; Dr. James C. Hepburn, the devoted and efficient 
missionary, first to China and now in Japan. These, 
and many others, did this institution give to the church 
and country, whose names have adorned the rolls of the 
church, and whose influence for good has been wide-spread 
and effective. The writer of this memoir, too, owes more 



106 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

to the Milton Academy than to any other institution for 
any attainments in solid learning that he has been en- 
abled to make. Had Mr. Junkin accomplished nothing in 
the department of education but the founding of this 
Academy, he had not lived in vain ! 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Inadequate Maintenance — Purchase of a Farm, and Removal to it — Socin- 
ian Controversy — Discussion of Baptism — The Religious Farmer — Pas- 
toral Labors — Sickness — Matthew Laird — A Vow — How his Mind was 
drawn to the Subject of Manual Labor Education — Manner — Help- 
meet — The Covenant — Prophecy — Rey. J. W. Moore's Letter— The 
Storm. 

ABOUT the time of Mr. Junkin's entrance upon his 
pastorate at Milton, the question whether religion 
could be supported upon the voluntary principle was fast 
approaching a negative solution in most parts of America. 
A few, but far from all, of the city pastors received a sti- 
pend barely adequate to support their families, but the great 
majority of pastors, in town and country, received much 
less than a competence, and were generally constrained to 
resort to other methods of eking out a support. Things 
are assuming a better condition of late years ; but, for a 
long time, the voluntary system of church support threat- 
ened to be a failure. 

The people of his charge had promised Mr. J. in their 
call what would have been at that day sufficient to support 
a family upon an economical scale ; but, not from inability, 
but heedlessness, little more than half of it was ever paid. 
In view of this, he purchased a small piece of woodland 
(sixty acres), two miles from the town of Milton, on the 
road to his country church, Penuel. To his already ardu- 
ous labors he then added the cares of superintending the 
clearing of a farm, the erection of a house and barn, and, 
subsequently, the management of the farm. Whatever he 
did, he did with energy, and upon everything he under- 
took he sought to throw the best lights of science. The 

( 107 ) 



io 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

experience of his earlier life was now of practical bene- 
fit, and he sought to apply to agriculture the science which 
he had acquired, and also to gather from agricultural books 
and periodicals the experience of others. He thus became 
one of the earliest scientific farmers in the fertile and lovely 
valley of the Susquehanna; and it cannot be doubted, that 
the light which he threw upon the subject by his conversa- 
tion, publications, and example, tended greatly to improve 
the practical farming of that whole region. 

This farm enterprise, taken in connection with events 
already mentioned, and others now to be introduced, led 
him to add to his other labors the toils and cares of 
editorship. In his Bible, tract, Sunday-school, and tem- 
perance labors, he felt the want of a convenient medium of 
communication with the religious public, and a vehicle of 
religious intelligence. Religious newspapers were not at 
that day so numerous as now, and all that were published 
issued from the cities of Philadelphia, Boston, and New 
York, then much more distant, in point of time, from the 
interior than they now are. Now a notice of a religious 
assembly can be sent to one of the cities, printed in a reli- 
gious paper, and widely circulated, in almost any part of 
the country, in a few days. Then it required weeks to do 
it, and as but few copies of these city papers circulated, 
they formed a very insufficient medium of communication 
with people living in the remote rural districts. This reli- 
gious want of his vicinage, and a similar want in the means 
of agricultural information, made him hope that a local 
periodical might be of great benefit to all these interests. 

Other considerations, now to be mentioned, led his mind 
in the same direction. There lived and preached at that 
time, in the town of Northumberland, a Unitarian clergy- 
man, the Rev. Mr. K , a native of England. He came 

to Milton, also, at stated times, and officiated for such as 
would go to hear him. He was a gentleman of high cul- 



SOCINIAN CONTR O VERS Y. 



[09 



ture, and reputed a mature scholar. He was not content 
with assailing the doctrine of our Lord's Supreme Divinity 
and the doctrine of the Trinity from the pulpit, but re- 
sorted to the press in default of obtaining large audiences 
to address orally. He published one or more essays in The 
Miltonian, a secular paper, issued in Milton. Mr. Junkin 
felt it to be his duty to reply to them, and he was thus drawn 
into a protracted controversy upon these topics. His 
replies were published in The State's Advocate, the other 
local weekly. 

The manuscript of his part in this controversy is still 
preserved, and furnishes proof of the great ability and 
learning which he displayed in defence of our Lord's Su- 
preme Divinity. Many competent judges, educated men, 
pronounced it the ablest argument which they had ever 
read upon the subject. It was generally conceded that the 
learned Socinian was vanquished. The writer of these 
pages is not a sufficiently impartial judge, but must make 
the record that he has never met with any discussion of 
these great themes quite so satisfactory and convincing. 

About the time this discussion was closing, Mr. Junkin 
had, as a matter of Christian courtesy, loaned to a Baptist 
minister the use of his (Shiloh) church in Milton, to be 
occupied on the days in which Mr. J. officiated in the 
country. There were a few Baptist families in Milton and 
vicinity, but they had no place of worship. The Rev. 
Eugenio Kinkaid, afterwards the Rev. Dr. Kinkaid, a dis- 
tinguished missionary of the Baptist Church in the Burman 
Empire, was the person who obtained the use of Shiloh 
Church, and, as the number of Baptists was very small, his 
congregation was largely composed of those who waited 
upon Mr. Junkin's ministry. Under these circumstances, 
it might have been presumed that Mr. K. would be con- 
tent to preach the doctrines of our common Christianity, 
without introducing the points in controversy between his 



no LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

sect and the Presbyterians. But such did not appear to be 
his sense of duty. He assailed the doctrines of the Pres- 
byterians on the subject of Baptism from a Presbyterian 
pulpit and before an audience chiefly Presbyterian. After 
this had been done several times, Mr. Junkin replied, and 
this opened up another discussion. And as he had thus 
been providentially drawn into a position in which he must 
either prove unfaithful to duty or stand forth as a defender of 
the faith, the necessity of having a paper under his own con- 
trol, through whose columns he might advocate the princi- 
ples that he was set to defend, was more strongly pressed 
upon his mind. 

The following, found among his papers of that period, 
discloses the motives that prompted him to this undertaking, 
whilst it gives us an insight of the inner life of the man, 
and informs us of his method of entering upon any im- 
portant enterprise or duty: 

"Dec. 18th, 1827, half-past 11 o'clock. 

"I have long and anxiously deliberated with myself and 
my friends on the subject of publishing the Religious Farmer. 
The want of an adequate subscription presents a serious ob- 
jection. When I confer with flesh and blood, my dearest and 
best friends, on the subject, I am thrown into great per- 
plexities as to the success of the measure ; but when I seek 
advice from Him who is the wonderful Counsellor, my fears 
generally vanish away. I have just spent half an hour in 
converse with God about this matter. I bowed my knees, 
full of perplexity and doubts. I have, in a most solemn 
manner, sought direction; have examined my own heart 
afresh as to the leading motives ; appealed to the heart- 
searching God to judge and let me know whether to thrust 
myself into public view, and to gain public applause, is a 
motive at all, and to what extent. And I now feel that if 
it is at all a motive in the corruption of this heart, it is one 
of very minor influence. I have asked again, that if a 
desire of worldly gain has any weight, He would let me see 
it. And here I fear the deceitfulness of my own heart; 
and yet the prospect of gain is so small, and of loss so cer- 



"THE RELIGIOUS FARMER." m 

tain, that I conclude that the desire for gain can have very- 
little influence. I have appealed time after time, both now 
and on former occasions, to the All-seeing Eye to judge 
whether the prime moving cause of the inclination of my 
heart to this work is not a sincere desire to advance the 
welfare of Zion and the glory of her King. I have thought 
this to be the case, and have often prayed, with all the ardor 
and importunity of which my soul is capable, that, if it be 
not so, a thousand barriers may be thrown in the way of 
the commencement of this work. . . . And now I rise 
from the interview with God with scarcely a doubt as to the 
practicability and great usefulness of the undertaking. 
Because it does appear to me that if God did not intend 
good to his church from it, He would influence my mind 
against it. I think I feel now, more than I ever did, dis- 
posed to spend myself and all I possess or control in the 
service of Jesus Christ. And, if I am not mistaken in this 
thought, surely my Master will not frown upon this effort to 
do good. I know success depends upon Him. He only 
can enable me to conduct the paper in his fear. To Him I 
look for guidance. I think I have faith in Him, and, there- 
fore, I lay myself to this work in the strength of the Lord 
my God ; and in his name do I lift up this banner, feeling 
in my heart a delightful assurance that when displayed, the 
Lord will rally many friends around it. ' ' 

Accordingly, he commenced, on the ist of January, 1828, 
the publication of "The Religious Farmer," which was 
published once in two weeks. It was a royal octavo of 
sixteen pages, printed with two columns on each page. It 
was continued to the ist of January, 1830, until a short 
time before he was called to preside over the institution at 
Germantown. The motto at the head of this little publi- 
cation was truly descriptive of the character and life of its 
editor: " Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit ; serving 
the Lord." The circulation was chiefly confined to the 
region of Pennsylvania of which Milton was the centre, 
and, whilst it was not a pecuniary success, it was instru- 
mental in great good. It was devoted, as its title indicates, 



H2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

to the interests of religion and agriculture ; but contained 
much other valuable matter bearing upon all the interests 
of religion, education, literature, and industrial economy. 
It widely extended his influence and usefulness, enabling 
him to speak at hundreds of firesides beyond the limits of 
his immediate pastoral charge. In its columns he waged a 
fearless war upon intemperance and other vices, and against 
error and immorality in all their forms, whilst, by dissem- 
inating intelligence concerning the benevolent operations 
of the day, he brought up the churches more effectively to 
the work. It may as well be here stated, that when, in 
1830, he ceased the publication of this paper, he transferred 
the subscription-list, without compensation, to the only 
religious paper then printed in Philadelphia. The Phila- 
delphian was, at that time, under the editorial control of 
Dr. Ezra Styles Ely, and to it Mr. Junkin transferred the 
subscription-list of the Farmer, little apprehending that, in 
less than three years, the paper, whose circulation he thus 
helped to extend, would become a virulent opponent of 
that reform in the church in which, in God's providence, 
he was destined to bear so conspicuous a part. 

It might be supposed that a man upon whom rested the 
cares of a pastoral charge, of an editorial chair, and of the 
various Christian enterprises in which he bore so prominent 
a part, would have little time to devote to the details of 
any of them, or that, having so many things on his hands, 
some must needs be neglected. But it was not so. Every 
thing he undertook was well and thoroughly done. Not an 
item in the long schedule of his employments was neglected. 
His pulpit, his Bible-classes, his Sabbath-schools, his paper, 
his farm, all were carried on efficiently. He not only de- 
vised the system of Bible Society, Tract, and Sabbath-school 
efforts, but he was the chief actuary in working the system. 
The Bibles, tracts, and Sabbath-school books, for the supply 
of four large counties, were all sent to him, and, under his 



REMOVAL TO MILTON. 113 

superintendence, distributed. The Bible, Tract, and Sab- 
bath-school Depositories were kept at Milton under his eye. 
He obtained the gratuitous services of a highly intelligent 
and energetic young lady, one of his spiritual children, 
and the daughter of a leading merchant of the place, to 
manage the Sabbath-school Depository, keeping it at her 
father's house. But the Bibles, tracts, and so forth were 
distributed from his own house. 

Nor were the minutiae of pastoral duty neglected : 

"It was my regular custom to visit every family con- 
tributing to the support of the congregations I served, once 
a year, and this I did in company with an elder. I an- 
nounced on Sabbath the families I expected to visit on a 
given day, and in the order of successive calls, so that each 
could know about what time to expect us. Other visits, 
very many, I paid, especially in cases of sickness. The 
great difficulty always was, in drawing out the personal 
views and feelings of those with whom we conversed. It 
is amazing how reluctant people are to talk about religion, 
— the practical and personal phases of it. Mere doctrinal 
matters were more easily managed. I used the Shorter 
Catechism always, but of course never, at a single visit, got 
over the whole of it."* 

When he undertook the publication of a paper, it be- 
came necessary that he should remove to town, and he 
accordingly purchased a house and lot in the borough of 
Milton, which he enlarged, and fitted up into a neat and 
comfortable mansion, and, when completed, removed his 
household to it. But incidents, interesting in themselves, 
and connected with his future history, occurred whilst re- 
siding upon his Turbot farm, which ought now to be related, 
and we go back in the narrative to bring up omissions : 

" Whilst building my barn, I was attacked with a violent 
bilious fever, then extensively prevalent. It was the only 

*Rem. 

10* 



II4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JL'XKIX. 

time in my life that I was dangerously sick. At times it 
seemed likely to prove fatal. My soul, during this illness, 
experienced great tenderness of religious affection, especi- 
ally when my dear and precious wife and I talked of the 
possibility of our soon being separated. Never until this 
trying hour did I know the full value of a true-hearted, 
pious wife. Nor did I lack any possible kindness from 
neighbors. But, above all, from Mrs. W. and Mrs. P. 
(mother of Governor Pollock). Such kindness and most 
solicitous attention can never be exceeded, and never can 
my heart forget or cease to be grateful to them and to my 
God for their ministrations of love. No hour, day or 
night, during the time of my peril, but the eyes of one of 
these precious women were upon me.* 

'•It was during this sickness that Matthew Laird came 
under my interested attention. William Thomas, a pious 
Baptist, who attended my ministry, was doing the work on 
my barn, being a carpenter. I asked him to conduct family 
worship in the apartment at the foot of the stairs, the upper 
terminus of which was near my chamber-door, so that I 
could hear pretty well. On one occasion he put the ser- 
vice upon his apprentice, Matthew Laird. The young 
man's prayer went to my heart; it was fervent and tender. 
When my wife came up to my chamber I said to her, ' If 
God spares my life, that young man shall enter the minis- 
try.' It pleased the Lord to spare my life, and I fulfilled 
my vow. Laird went as a missionary to Africa, and thence 
early ascended to the heavenly glory along with his de- 
voted wife. 



* Since the above was written, ex-Governor Pollock has related to the 
author the following incident connected with this illness, which he (the Gov- 
ernor) had from his mother. She was watching by the sick-bed of Mr. 
Junkin at the time the physician had almost abandoned hope of his recovery # 
The patient had lain for some hours in a stupor, when he suddenly awoke 
and repeated the 17th and 18th verses of the 118th Psalm, in the version of 
Sir Francis Rouse: 

" I shall not die but live, and shall the works of God discover, 
The Lord hath me chastised sore, but not to death given over." 

And the utterance seemed prophetic ; for, from that moment, he grew 
steadily, but slowly, better. 



MATTHEW LAIRD. 



"5 



"That prayer of Matthew Laird is, in a certain sense, 
the start-point of Lafayette College, as it was the first link 
in the chain of divine providences that led me into the 
department of education. I received him into my family 
(the pious carpenter having generously relinquished the last 
year of his apprenticeship), and aided him in the expenses 
of his education, until, as mentioned, I saw him depart to 
a foreign field. This turned my mind more fully to the 
subject of Christian education for the ministry, and from 
that day to this it has been my chief life-work. Soon after- 
wards I was led to take Daniel Gaston out of a coach- 
maker's shop in Milton, and start him upon a similar 
career. He has long been a most useful minister of the 
gospel, and is now a pastor in Philadelphia.* In removing 
to Milton, one object had in view was to arrange for aiding 
such young men. In constructing my barn in town, I made 
space for a carpenter-shop, so as to afford employment and 
exercise to them when not engaged in study. In following 
up this idea, my mind was attracted to the Manual Labor 
Academy of Pennsylvania, located at Germantown, and the 
idea of combining with study the health-preserving labor 
of the hands, and so contribute to the expenses of educa- 
tion, got possession of my mind, and the development of 
that idea resulted in Lafayette College, as I shall show 
should I live to write the history of that noble institu- 
tion. "f 

We copy the following allusion to the case of Mr. Laird 
from the annual report of the Board of Education for 1847, 
written by the pen of the sainted Dr. Cortlandt Van Rens- 
selaer, who was a classmate of Mr. Laird in the Princeton 

Seminary : 

WHAT A PASTOR DID FOR AFRICA. 

"On the banks of the Susquehanna was once settled a 
Presbyterian pastor (yet alive) whom God afflicted with 
sickness. In the midst of languor and disease it was sweet 
for him to look to Christ, and to form high and solemn re- 
solves to live more unreservedly to his glory if life were 

* Mr. Gaston died before Dr. J. f Rem. 



n6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

spared. His meditations were one day interrupted by the 
hymns of praise which a young carpenter mingled with his 
daily work. And the sick man heard them. His pious 
and enterprising soul soon suggested the question, ' Why 
may not this young carpenter glorify the son of Joseph in 
the ministry of salvation?' He immediately determined 
that if the youth were of a suitable character, and had a 
love of souls, he would educate him, in the hope that the 
Spirit of Christ would count him worthy of the sacred call- 
ing. The pastor insisted upon his wife inviting the young 
man to lead in family prayers, which he did with unusual 
unction. Inquiries justified the favorable impression re- 
ceived. The pastor recovers. The carpenter lays aside 
his plane and his saw. He enters an academy, and then a 
college. He determines, by the grace of God, to devote 
himself to the ministry, and to be a missionary to the hea- 
then. He enters Princeton Seminary. The peculiar savor 
of his piety is yet held in sacred remembrance there. He 
sails for Africa, and enters her vast fields waving with the 
harvest. In the midst of his labors the noon-day sun smote 
down the reaper ; but doubtless he was carried home re- 
joicing, 'bringing his sheaves with him.' From the man- 
sions of glory he testifies to the precious influences of a 
pastor's care." 

The allusion was doubtless written from memory by Dr. 
Van Rensselaer, and whilst the statement does not embrace 
all the details, it is substantially correct. 

After preparing for college at the Milton Academy, Mr. 
Laird repaired to Jefferson College, where he graduated; 
then to Princeton Seminary, where he completed the full 
course of study; and thence, after some delay in needful 
preparation, he sailed for Africa in company with the Rev. 
John Cloud. It pleased a wise Providence, that these de- 
voted men should soon be cut down by the fever of that 
torrid clime, falling early martyrs to their missionary zeal. 
The writer of these pages knew them both intimately, and 
loved them dearly. ''They were lovely and pleasant in 
their lives, and in death they were not divided." 



JAMES C. HEPBURN. uy 

The name of James C. Hepburn has been mentioned 
among the valuable men trained in part at the school 
of Dr. Kirkpatrick. He was brought up under the pastoral 
care of Dr. Junkin, and in a communication from Japan to 
the religious journals of this country, published a few years 
ago, bore testimony to the faithfulness, affection, and skill 
of his pastor in guiding him in the path of life, and as- 
cribed to him much of that influence which turned his 
attention to the missionary work, and fitted him for the 
labors which he has been able to perform. Dr. Hepburn 
studied medicine after having graduated at Nassau Hall, 
and has spent most of his life in China and Japan as a 
missionary. Ill health compelled him to return for a season 
to this country. But, after practicing his profession for a 
few years in New York City, he again went upon missionary 
ground, and has done a great work for Christ and for civil- 
ization in the empire of Japan, having prepared a diction- 
ary of that difficult language, and translated into it some 
portions of the Word of God. There he is still at work; 
and until the results of the labors of that modest, godly, 
scholarly, and accomplished man can be measured, the 
extent of the influences for good, begun by Mr. Junkin's 
instrumentality at Milton, can never be ascertained. In 
the spring of 1828 Mr. Junkin removed his family to his 
new residence in Milton, in which he continued to reside 
until called to the "Pennsylvania Manual Labor Institu- 
tion," in 1830. 

Whilst it is true that Mr. Laird was the first person, not 
of their own family connection, that Mr. and Mrs. Junkin 
received into their family, with a view to aid in his prepa- 
ration for the gospel ministry, and whilst his case was the 
means of leading them more largely into the education 
enterprise, yet it is due alike to truth and to gratitude to 
record the fact, that the young carpenter was the fourth 
that they had thus received. For Mrs. Junkin's nephew, 



n8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

that eminent minister and philanthropist Dr. John M. 
Dickey, was, for a time, an inmate of their house, whilst 
pursuing his studies with Mr. Kirkpatrick ; and the son of 
Mr. Galloway, Mr. Junkin's brother-in-law and pastor, was 
for years an inmate, and afterwards became an eminent 
and useful minister ; and the writer of this narrative was 
similarly favored, and owes more to them, for any measure 
of good he has been able to accomplish, than to any other 
human beings. 

Mrs. Junkin, the woman who, in her girlhood, shrunk 
from the responsibilities of a pastor's wife with self-dis- 
trust, proved, through all these years of toil and sacrifice, 
an helpmeet for him indeed. With quiet, unostentatious, 
and cheerful alacrity she seconded all his efforts for good. 
Possessing a sound and judicious mind, a heart of con- 
stant and unfailing kindness, and a mature and accom- 
plished education, she not only made his home cheerful 
and happy, and the scene of refined hospitality, but in 
many points she made up for his lack of service. The 
multiplied cares and labors that rested upon him, naturally 
made him somewhat abstracted in his manner, and some- 
times, when absorbed in thought or in business, he would 
appear cold and unsocial, although really of a warm, genial, 
and hospitable temperament. This lack of social manner was 
most admirably supplemented by her cordial habitude and 
social tact. And she would do it in such a way as to ap- 
pear a part of her husband, and make the visitor feel as if it 
came from him, rather than to present herself as a contrast 
to his unconscious reserve. She was, too, a wise and safe 
counsellor, and to her, on all important occasions, the 
strong man turned, with as much confidence in the sound- 
ness of her judgment as in the affection of her heart. 

But the impression must not be left that Dr. J. was ever 
repulsive in his manner. It was the calmness of abstrac- 
tion, and discerning people soon got to understand it. 



THE COVENANT. 



:i 9 



For when recalled to a sense of what was passing, no man 
was more genial in social intercourse, and, by all that knew 
him best, he was as much beloved as admired. 

Before terminating our account of his pastorate and 
other diversified labors at Milton, a few incidents ought to 
be mentioned that shed light upon the inner life of his 
religious character and labors. His house was the centre 
of a religious circle of humble but earnest people, who, 
amid all the worldliness that surrounded them, maintained 
a close walk with God, and seemed to keep the incense 
burning upon the social altar when religion languished all 
around. The little prayer-meeting, mentioned in his Rem- 
iniscences, often met at his house, and was mostly marked 
by fervor in the devotional exercises. The judgment-day 
only can disclose the influence of that cluster of praying 
people. Some of the precious names are found appended 
to the following covenant, a copy of which, in the hand- 
writing of the lamented Laird, has been transmitted to the 
writer, since he began these pages, by the fifth signer, and 
the only survivor of the eight whose names are affixed : 

"At the House of the Rev. Geo. Junkin, Thursday Evening, 
January ist, 1829. 

"We the subscribers, deeply impressed with a sense of 
our own sins and shortcomings during the past year, and 
desirous of feeling pungent sorrow for our lukewarmness in 
the service of our gracious Redeemer, and believing that a 
mutual pledge of increased attention to the duties of prayer, 
of self-denial, of diligence in the study of the Holy Scrip- 
tures, of all that provocation to love and good works, 
which the Bible recommends, might be a means of secur- 
ing such attention, and of advancing our own souls in the 
practical knowledge of the divine life, do hereby express 
our desire and intention of heart, to love God and his 
people more purely and fervently during this year than we 
have done in the last, to serve Him and them better, to 
live more abstracted from the anxious cares of this life, 
more loose from the world, more steadily prepared for our 



12 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

transit to the heavenly state, more deeply and sensibly 
alive to the spiritual wants of our friends and neighbors, 
the church, and mankind at large, more actively at war with 
sin, less conformed to the world, and more transformed in 
the renewing of our minds ; in short, we desire to feel as 
Paul felt when he said, ' To me to live is Christ, and to die 
is gain.' And if God, in his long-suffering, should spare 
our lives and open in his holy providence the door, it is 
our wish and desire to meet in this room, on the next 
New- Year's evening, to thank Him for his mercies, to con- 
fess our sins before Him and invoke his benediction. Or, 
if God shall see proper to send for any of us, the survivors 
will praise Him for any bright hopes He may have caused to 
play around the grave's devouring mouth, and to ask Him to 
bless the visitation of his rod. And now may the Lord 
our Redeemer display the might of his holy arm, in power- 
fully arresting and turning the attention of the people of 
this town and its vicinity to the great concerns of the 
eternal world. 

" Geo. Junkin, 
" Matthew Laird, 
"Wm. L. Housel, 
"Julia R. Junkin, 
" Mary Moore, 
"John Bodine, 
" Samuel Morrison, 
" Daniel Gaston." 

This is here inserted as an index of the spirit that per- 
vaded the heart of its writer, the pastor, and the hearts of 
the seven who joined with him in the covenant. It was 
an odd coincidence that the copy reached the writer, by 
mail, just half a century after it was signed, having been 
sent in response to a notice in the Presbyterian, asking for 
material for this biography. 

The lady who sent it, Mrs. Parke, of Pottsgrove, is the 
sister of the Rev. J. Wilson Moore, the first missionary to 
Arkansas Territory, before mentioned as a student of Mil- 
ton Academy. When he heard of the death of Dr. Junkin, 
he sent to the Central Presbyterian a communication in 



REMINISCENCES OF A PIONEER. I2 i 

regard to him, parts of which are here inserted, as contain- 
ing the estimate of one who was reared, in a measure, under 
his influence at Milton, and because it will throw light 
upon that part of his life now being recorded. Half a 
century had not erased the impression made upon the 
mind of the writer, and, forty years after having last heard 
his voice in the pulpit, he was able thus to write : 

REMINISCENCES OF A PIONEER. 

" No faithful minister of the gospel has any proper con- 
ception of the effects of his own labors. He may often in 
the hours of his despondency imagine that he has labored 
in vain and spent his strength for nought ; and ask the 
question, Who hath believed our report ? But his words are 
remembered by others when they are forgotten by himself, 
and will influence the life and actions of many when his 
tongue lies silent in the grave. 

" It was my happy lot in my younger days to sit under 
the instructions of the Rev. George Junkin in the early 
years of his ministry, — and though fifty years have glided 
away since the time I first heard him preach, and more 
than forty since I last heard his voice in the pulpit, I know 
not that a single day of all this period has passed in which 
some of the words he uttered have not risen in my remem- 
brance ; or that a single Sabbath has passed when I have 
not found myself influenced by the instructions I received 
from his lips. 

" He had a mind of peculiar construction. His thoughts 
were profound and penetrating. His manner of elucidating 
and presenting divine truth was different from that of all 
men to whom I have ever listened. It was the testimony 
of most persons, that their memories could retain more of 
his discourses than of any other minister. His voice was 
peculiarly adapted to impress his thoughts. The Rev. 
Richard Armstrong, long a faithful and successful mis- 
sionary in the Sandwich Isles, related to me that while a 
thoughtless boy he once heard Mr. Junkin repeat the 
words, 'And they crucified Him,' in such tones, that for a 
whole week they seemed to be sounding in his ears. 

" He took unusual pains in showing the connection of 



I22 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

his text with the context, in defining the meaning of the 
words, and in pointing out the different shades of meaning 
in the original, — and often, when preaching from the Old 
Testament, in comparing it with the Septuagint. This, to 
some, seemed unnecessary, but he was at that time, though 
unconsciously to himself, preparing the minds of a number 
of his younger hearers, not only to think, but to labor with 
success in the vineyard of their Divine Master. 

"When he had thus prepared the field before him, his 
presentation of doctrinal truth was overwhelming. He 
dwelt more than most ministers I have heard on the sov- 
ereignty of God, and the peculiar doctrines of grace. He 
dwelt much upon the electing love of God. This excited 
great opposition in the minds of those who were inclined 
to Arminian sentiments. I once saw him publicly and 
rudely assailed, as being guilty of inconsistency, when he 
had, at a funeral, held out in glowing terms the freeness 
of salvation to all who were willing to receive it as offered 
in the gospel. The objector told him that the doctrine he 
preached in the pulpit, viz., Calvinism, was the most dan- 
gerous in the world. He replied by simply requesting 
him to compare the lives of his congregation with the lives 
of those who preached a different doctrine. 

"The conclusion of his discourses was of the most ani- 
mating and moving character. I once heard a clergyman 
of great learning and judgment say, that he coveted nothing 
more than to be able to ' sum up' his discourses as did Mr. 
Junkin. 'For my own part,' said he, 'I expend my 
strength and feelings before I come to the close, — but Mr. 
J. reserves his to the last charge.' This is a most im- 
portant point in the delivery of sermons. Many, after 
preaching good discourses, close by some scattering and 
pointless remarks, which leave the minds of their hearers 
unimpressed. Jonathan Edwards is said to have labored 
more in the preparation of his 'application,' than on any 
other part of his discourses. A convincing application is 
like having the last speech in a great debate. Of the cele- 
brated Dr. Ryland it is said, that it was customary for 
the good old ladies of his congregation, at the close of his 
discourses, to whisper to each other through their tears, — 
' Well, of all Mr. Ryland's sermons, this was the best.' 

" Mr. Junkin was connected with the Associate Reformed 



REMINISCENCES OF A PIONEER. 



23 



Church when I first knew him, but he shortly after became 
a member of the Northumberland Presbytery. Like most 
other men of superior talents and decided character, he 
had bitter enemies and warm friends. He never counted 
the cost in reproving sin. His enemies hated him with a 
cordial hatred, and his friends would have laid down their 
lives for his sake. But what may seem strange, there were 
some of his brethren in the ministry who always treated 
him with marked coolness. But this surprise will vanish 
when we call to mind, that even among the disciples there 
was a strife, as to which of them should be the greatest. 
Men do not become angels on earth. It is not uncommon, 
however deplorable, for good men to envy others of superior 
talents. I never could perceive any evidence of unhallowed 
ambition on the part of Mr. Junkin. 

" Every one who has entered the ministry from proper 
motives will agree that the hour of his ordination to the 
sacred office was to him the most solemn and impressive 
of his life. In view of it he has often doubted. He has 
toiled and wept and prayed, perhaps for years. The hour 
has now come when he is about to receive his commission 
as an ambassador from the King of kings. He feels his 
own weakness and nothingness, and asks, Who is sufficient 
for these things ? My thoughts now run far back to that 
solemn hour. I almost realize myself standing before a 
large and silent assembly, congregated in an old edifice, on 
the East Branch of the lovely Susquehanna,— a river not 
unknown to song, — for the place where I stood was not far 
below the village of Wyoming, which Campbell has ren- 
dered immortal by the story of its Gertrude. Before me 
rose the grave aspect of Mr. Junkin to deliver to me the 
charge. 

"There were times when his vivid and poetic imagina- 
tion carried him beyond his ordinary performances. This 
was one of those times. After alluding to the distance and 
unknown character of the region to which I was about to 
be ordained as an evangelist, he represented me as about 
to enter one of the dens of the Prince of Darkness, where 
I must contend with him alone. Then, suddenly passing 
from the scenes of time, he painted the coming of the Son 
of man ; the myriads of all ages ascending from the land 
and from the sea to meet Him in the air ; the separation 



124 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

of the righteous from the wicked ; the joyful meeting of 
faithful ministers with those whom they have instrumentally 
saved and prepared for that day. He then graphically and 
awfully represented Apollyon, the great destroyer, as 
dragged before the tribunal of the Judge to hear his final 
doom. 'And you,' said he, 'must be able in that day to 
point to many a scar inflicted on his front by your right 
hand.' The imagery I cannot pretend to describe, but the 
impression will leave me, if ever, only in my dying hour. It 
followed me in my long journey. It has animated me a 
thousand times in my trials, when I have imagined myself 
engaged almost personally and literally in the figurative 
conflict described in a period long past. 

"How blessed is the memory of the righteous ! What a 
reward of grace awaits some persons ! How glorious must 
be their entrance upon it ! 

" I was anxious to know something of the last hours of 
Dr. Junkin. His gifted daughter writes me that his last 
words were, ' Saviour,' ' Heaven.' How suggestive of the 
laborious past, and the blissful future ! 

" Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last 
end be like his ! 

"As swells abroad the last trump's sound, 
Let me be found where he is found ; 
As sinks beneath my foot the land, 
Let me but stand where he doth stand !" 

Central Presbyterian. 
******* 

The enemies, who the above writer says hated him with 
a cordial hatred, could not have been numerous, and con- 
sisted of those whose sins he pungently reproved, and, it 
may be, of a few whom he had worsted in argument, or 
whose "liquor traffic" was interfered with by his temper- 
ance efforts. None, who intimately knew the man, could 
cordially hate him, for the purity of his motives and of his 
life disarmed hatred. 

A characteristic of Mr. Junkin's piety that imparted a 
peculiar cast to his ministry, was the implicitness of his 
belief "of the whole word of God," and the confidence 



PROPHECY AND HISTORY. 



25 



with which he seemed to expect the fulfilment of every 
promise and every prophecy. He "received the kingdom 
of God as a little child," with uncaviiing faith ; and never 
seemed to doubt what was recorded of God's past working, 
nor what was predicted of His future operations. He took 
broad and comprehensive views of Christ's mediatorial 
kingdom, and considered all things else subservient to its 
interests. Hence he studied history, and noted contem- 
porary providences, in the light of the Scriptures, and 
especially of prophecy. And whilst admitting that the inter- 
pretation of prophecy, antecedent to its fulfilment, was diffi- 
cult, and to be attempted with modesty, yet he believed that 
"the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," and that 
it was a duty to study the prophetic writings as well as other 
portions of the Scriptures. Accordingly, he kept his 
eye steadily upon the development of God's providential 
scheme in the progress of contemporary history, and failed 
not to compare history in its unfoldings with history pre- 
script in the prophecies. He accordingly bestowed more 
attention upon the subject of prophecy, throughout his 
entire ministry, than is usual among ministers of the gospel. 

The struggle of Greece with the Ottoman power, which 
resulted in the independence of the former, occasioned the 
first public effort of this kind. The decisive battle of 
Navarino, in which the fleets of England and France almost 
annihilated that of the Turk, aroused his mind to the con- 
sideration of those prophecies that, as he supposed, related 
to "the false Prophet," and to the downfall of the Ottoman 
Empire. He published a series of essays upon this subject 
in 1828-9, and the subsequent history of that power has 
gone far to confirm the correctness of his interpretations. 

Many incidents in the history of Mr. Junkin's ministra- 
tions at Milton might be recorded illustrative of his zeal, 
fervor, fearlessness, and power in the pulpit ; but it would 
swell this narrative beyond convenient dimensions. One 
11* 



126 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

incident is so vividly impressed upon the writer's memory, 
and on the memory of many still living, that it comes up 
with the freshness of a present reality. It was a sultry 
Sabbath afternoon. The little Shiloh Church was full of 
hearers. Mr. Junkin was in the pulpit. His theme was 
the judgment to come. Suddenly there swept down from 
the northwest a dark, portentous cloud, which came rapidly 
careering upon the wings of the wind. In a few minutes 
it burst upon the town with the violence of a tornado. So 
loud was the thunder and the howling of the storm that 
the crash of a huge walnut-tree that was blown against the 
church-building was scarcely perceived. The voice of the 
speaker was soon lost in the voice of the storm. He 
paused, but remained erect in the pulpit, calm and com- 
posed, and apparently engaged in silent prayer. Conster- 
nation sat upon every countenance in the assembly. Sud- 
denly some of the windows gave way, and the storm burst 
in ; and the part of the audience that occupied the north 
side of the house rushed — seemed almost to be swept — to 
the other side. The crush of the edifice seemed inevitable ; 
but it withstood the pressure, and the storm swept past ; 
and as its wail died in the distance, there was a solemn 
silence in the church, that might be felt. With a calm, 
steady, solemn voice, and an impressiveness of manner 
corresponding with the scene, the preacher exclaimed, "If 
such be the tones of his voice, and such the mere lifting 
of his finger, — if we thus quail before the mere whisper of 
his wrath, oh ! what shall be its tones when the Archangel's 
trump shall peal ! What the exhibition of his power when 
his arm is bared for final vengeance ! What our terror, 
if we abide the storms of his righteous and eternal indig- 
nation ! Oh ! fly for refuge to the Ark of Salvation !" 

The effect was such, for the moment at least, as is rarely 
produced upon an audience ; and with a prayer and the 
benediction he dismissed them. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

At Milton — Mr. Kirkpatrick — Reformation of 1828 — Mr. Barber's Mission 
and Request — Action of the Presbytery — Resolutions concerning Church 
Discipline and Sacraments — Wide-spread Effect — Letters on Temperance 
— Remedies — In the General Assembly — Elected Principal of M. L. 
Academy. 

ALLUSION has been made in a previous chapter to the 
state of the churches in the region of the Susque- 
hannas. This state of things was deplored by Mr. Junkin, 
and by most of his brethren of the Presbytery, as well as 
by many godly laymen. All desired a revival and a refor- 
mation of existing abuses; but previous to Mr. J.'s union 
with the Presbytery there was no one who seemed willing 
to breast the storm of popular opposition with which, it 
was apprehended, the needed reforms would be met. Nor 
was it to be expected that he would at once assume a posi- 
tion which more properly belonged to the older members 
of the body. A newcomer would of course encounter 
more odium than one who had long held a place in the 
Sanhedrim of the district. Whilst, therefore, he was 
prompt to make efforts against intemperance, Sabbath- 
breaking, and profanity, Mr. J. waited a little while for 
some providential opportunity of assailing other evils that 
were more fully within the church. But he lost no time 
in preparing the way for such assault. He conversed often 
with his brethren upon these topics, discussed them in his 
own pulpit, and wherever else opportunity offered ; and in 
this way prepared the minds of others to co-operate in 
needed changes. Nor was it very long until, in God's 
providence, an occasion was offered that called out the 

(127) 



128 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

action he desired. This occasion shall be presently men- 
tioned. 

It ought to have been mentioned that Mr. Junkin's 
intimate friend and coadjutor in the educational work, the 
Rev. David Kirkpatrick, had come also into the Presbytery 
of Northumberland. One of the last acts of the Presby- 
tery of Philadelphia (A. R.)was to ordain Mr. Kirkpatrick, 
who was a licentiate before leaving Ireland, to the work of 
the ministry as an evangelist. This ordination took place 
in Shiloh Church, Milton, and Mr. K. continued, as long as 
he resided in Milton, to supply the church of Mifflinburg, 
and occasionally others, with the ministration of the Word 
and ordinances. Mr. K. was in constant intercourse with 
Mr. Junkin ; and they often took counsel together about 
the interests of Zion. The eminent Teacher fully coincided 
with the Pastor in his views of church discipline, but was 
not blessed with that firmness of nerve that fitted him for 
leadership. He was always a faithful auxiliary. 

The occasion which opened the way for the needed 
reform in regard to the matter of the sacraments was as 
follows : Mr. Daniel Barber, a licentiate of the Presbytery, 
an earnest and warm preacher of the gospel, had been 
laboring in a missionary field upon the head-waters of the 
Susquehanna, West Branch. The woodsmen and lumber- 
men of that wild region had rarely heard the gospel ; no 
churches were organized, and the few that in their former 
homes had been members of the church, had mostly lost 
sight of their Christian obligations, and differed in little 
from the people of the world. But Mr. Barber's preach- 
ing produced a strong impression. Many were awakened 
to a sense of their spiritual need. Conversions took place. 
Some who had been members of the church were aroused 
to the remembrance of their former vows, and a very gen- 
eral wish was expressed to have the Lord's Supper admin- 
istered, and to have the children baptized. Mr. Barber 



MR. BARBERS MISSION. 12 g 

labored under the auspices of the Northumberland Mis- 
sionary Society, but made his reports to the Presbytery 
under whose direction this society was conducted. He 
laid the above facts before the Presbytery, and, in view of 
them, he was ordained as an evangelist. He then asked for 
instructions. He informed the Presbytery, that when he 
should return to Sinnemahoning, with the full powers of a 
Minister of the gospel, the importunities for ordinances, 
which had beset him when a licentiate, would be renewed, 
and he wished to know whether he ought to baptize all the 
children that were offered, or only those, one or both of 
whose parents professed faith in Jesus, and became mem- 
bers of the church. This request for instructions was made 
just after the ordination solemnity closed, Nov. 21, 1827, 
and just as the Presbytery was about adjourning. As there 
was no time to discuss matters of such grave importance, 
the subject was referred to a committee, of which Mr. Jun- 
kin was made chairman, and the Presbytery adjourned to 
the eleventh day of January, 1828, to hear and act upon 
the report. 

Thus called by an unexpected providence to the very 
work which he had been so long pondering, Mr. Junkin 
aimed to do it faithfully and thoroughly. He was aware, 
that the attempt to promulgate and reduce to practice in the 
churches the principles which he believed to be accordant 
with God's word and the standards of the church, would 
occasion great commotion, and encounter much opposi- 
tion. He knew that the laxity in the practice of the 
churches had superinduced loose conceptions of the sa- 
credness and of the obligations of the Sacraments. He 
knew that the practice of administering baptism privately 
had almost caused it to be no longer esteemed a public 
ordinance of the Lord's house, and that to restrict it to 
the children of parents, one or both of whom were in full 
communion with the church, would be resisted by all, or 



130 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

nearly all, who had taken advantage of the loose practice, 
and possibly by many of his brethren who had yielded to 
this popular demand. And he knew that the chief odium 
populi would fall upon his own head. But where prin- 
ciple and what he believed to be necessary for the welfare 
of the church were involved, he never faltered. He, in 
connection with the committee, prepared an elaborate 
report, well argued out, from the Scriptures and the 
standards, and not only meeting the points raised by Mr. 
Barber's request for instruction, but others necessarily and 
logically connected with them. 

Meanwhile the idea had gone forth that this Committee 
would propose some radical reforms. And when the day 
for the meeting of the Presbytery came, although it proved 
inclement, the church in which they met (Penuel) was 
crowded to its utmost capacity. The Presbytery, too, was 
full. The report was presented. It was ably and prayer- 
fully discussed for the space of two full days. On the 
second day, the Presbytery, and a large assembly of the 
people, continued seven hours, without recess and without 
commotion. 

"Before the vote was taken upon each resolution, and 
after argument upon it had ceased, the Moderator called 
upon some member to address the throne of grace for di- 
vine direction in the special vote about to be taken. This 
gave a peculiar solemnity to the scene, and, as all thought, 
brought the blessing of God upon the deliberations. On 
no other ground can we account for such perfect unanimity 
upon subjects upon which there had previously prevailed 
considerable diversity in practice." — Religious Farmer. 

The writer, then a schoolboy, was present at this meeting, 
and well remembers the profound stillness and solemnity 
that pervaded it. He remembers that Mr. Kirkpatrick, 
in a speech of deep seriousness, asked the Presbytery to 
consider the momentous results of adopting such a paper. 



RESOLUTIONS OF THE PRESBYTERY. 131 

He said it would strike deep, sweep wide, and revolutionize 
the practice of the churches. His heart and conscience 
went with the measure, yet he could not but apprehend 
serious commotions in the congregations. " It will cause," 
said he, "a breaking up like the breaking up of the Sus- 
quehanna in the spring freshet." 

The resolutions adopted by the Presbytery at that time 
were seven in number, and each was sustained in the report 
by a succinct argument drawn from Scripture, the Stand- 
ards, and the reason of the case. The first asserted that 
in the judgment of the Presbytery, according to the Word 
of God and the Standards of the Presbyterian Church, no 
parents have a right to present their children in baptism 
but those who (one or both) make a credible profession of 
faith in Christ, and obedience to Him, and evidence the 
same by obeying his dying command. The second de- 
clared the opinion that Baptism was a public sealing ordi- 
nance, and not, on ordinary occasions, to be privately 
administered. The third, expressed chiefly in the ener- 
getic language of Dr. Mason, declared " That an adult, in 
order to his right reception into the Christian church, 
must be acquainted with the leading doctrines of grace, 
must be able to ' give a reason of the hope that is within 
him,' must make an open and unequivocal avowal of the 
Redeemer's name, and must be reasonably vigilant in the 
habitual discharge of his religious and moral duty." The 
fourth asserted that the "Form of Government" and the 
Bible make it the duty and exclusive right of the Church 
Session to examine and admit persons to sealing Ordinances. 
The fifth asserted that the moral turpitude of faithless bap- 
tismal vows, and of unhallowed approach to the Lord's 
table, lay, in part, at the door of every member of a Ses- 
sion that admitted improper persons to these ordinances, 
being cognizant of the facts. The sixth claimed that Ses- 
sions ought to inquire of heads of families directly, whether 



1 32 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

family worship was observed or not, and not to admit 
habitual neglecters of it to sealing ordinances. And the 
seventh asserted "That a sound judgment, familiar ac- 
quaintance with Scripture doctrines, piety, and prayer, 
with capacity to rule, are indispensable qualifications for 
the office of ruling elder ; and, where these cannot be 
found, that people are not ready to be organized into a 
congregation." 

As was expected, this paper occasioned great commotion 
throughout the churches, not only within the bounds of 
the Presbytery, but beyond them. It was noticed and 
commented upon in the religious journals of the day, and 
occasioned much discussion of the subjects involved in 
different parts of the church. Some favored and some 
gainsaid the action of the Presbytery of Northumberland, 
yet few objections were made to the truth and righteous- 
ness of it, objection being chiefly raised against its expedi- 
ency and the practicability of enforcing it. But such was 
the intrinsic reasonableness of the measures, and so con- 
clusive were the argumentative parts of the paper, that 
there was far less objection to it within the bounds of the 
Presbytery than had been apprehended. It led thousands 
to think of the true nature and uses of church ordinances 
and of church discipline, and the members of Presbytery 
found much less difficulty in applying the principles 
assumed than they expected. It did good. It elevated 
the standard of church membership ; it did much to restore 
the ordinance of baptism to its normal position and uses ; 
it erected many a family altar where none had been before, 
and restored others that had fallen down ; it roused the 
minds of the people to consider the solemn responsibilities 
involved in church membership ; it struck an effective blow 
at worldly conformity and formalism ; it strengthened the 
hands of Pastors and Sessions, in denying ordinances to 
the unworthy ; it thus drew a broader line of demarcation 



LETTERS ON TEMPERANCE. 



*33 



between the church and the world, made the church purer, 
and thus more efficient for good, and produced many inci- 
dental benefits. 

Whilst Mr. Junkin was the author of this paper, and bore 
a chief part in securing its adoption and promulgation 
from every pulpit in the Presbytery, having also, at the re- 
quest of the Presbytery, published it in his periodical, it 
is due to truth to state, that nearly all the members of 
Presbytery stood up to the work with brave hearts and 
strong hands. The venerable Patterson, and Painter, and 
Smith, and Barber, and Kirkpatrick, and indeed all, ac- 
quiesced, and most were forward in the movement. 

Although this ecclesiastical action occurred in the quiet 
domain of a rural Presbytery, and was done comparatively 
in a corner, yet was its influence wide-spread, and it is 
here recorded because it was one of the most important 
events of Mr. Junkin's labors in that region, and because 
it proves that from first to last he was found ready to toil 
and sacrifice his personal popularity and ease for what he 
believed to make for the purity, peace, and prosperity of 
Christ's blood-bought church. Sound doctrine, faithful 
discipline, and earnest Christian effort always found in him 
a zealous and unflinching advocate. 

Allusion has been made to Mr. J.'s early temperance 
labors, and also to eight letters written after his recovery 
from the only serious illness of his life, to the gifted and 
noble physician whose attentions were the means, under 
God, of his recovery, but who was in danger from the con- 
vivial habits of the times. For obvious reasons, the name 
is suppressed ; nor is it proposed to print these letters, al- 
though they might be productive of much good, being 
adapted to all similar cases, with the exception of a few 
personal allusions. But it is proposed to give a single ex- 
tract, with a view of showing that the writer of these letters 
was then, as he generally has been, ahead of his times in 
12 



I3 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

regard to great and important principles and measures of 
reform. After reasoning most earnestly and logically with 
his friend, with a view to bring him to a sense of the 
danger of his course ; after bringing arguments from the 
acknowledged principles of medical science, from the 
Bible, from history, from his friend's social and profes- 
sional position and interests, from the sacred circle of 
domestic endearments, from the claims of honor, religion, 
and humanity, from Heaven, Earth, and Hell, he, in the 
sixth and seventh letters, suggests remedies for the terrible 
evil against which he sought to guard the gifted and ac- 
complished victim ; and these remedies, suggested in the 
infancy of the temperance movement, are such as the 
experience and the advance of half a century have not 
yet outstripped. They were, — 

"i. Every morning go into a private room, read a 
chapter in the Bible, and bow your knees to the Father 
of Mercies, and ask Him to break off your fetters and set 
you free. This is the most important direction I have to 
give ; . . . . for I cannot think a mere human resolve will 
ever effect the desired change. Look at the history of 
your own experience. How often have you resolved to 
avoid the peril, and in what have your resolves issued ? In 
disappointment. And why? Because they were based upon 
human strength, not on divine power ! As well might 
King Canute say to the ocean's swelling tide, ' Hitherto, 
and no farther.' So long as you depend upon your own 
firmness of purpose, you will fail. So long as you seek not 
divine aid, you flatter your own pride, and assume that 
you do not need God's guidance and help. . . ' . . Be 
entreated, then, as you value the interests dearest to your 
heart, to make experiment of this simple remedy. It will 
cost you about twenty minutes per diem; and it may save 
you twenty years of time, twenty thousand dollars in 
money, and secure you twenty millions of ages of heavenly 
joys in eternity. 

"2. Cultivate the endearments of the domestic hearth. 
No man ever became intemperate in company of a wife and 
children whom he loved. God has given you a very high 



REMEDIES FOR INTEMPERANCE. 



35 



degree of those kindly feelings which are such lovely ele- 
ments in the character of the husband and father. Despise 
not these gifts. Yield to the charm that is in the word 
honied This is pressed at some more length. 

"3. Study general science. If in a slack time of busi- 
ness you are at a loss for employment and amusement, and 
the dulness of idleness becomes wearisome, you are tempted 
to seek a cure in company. This is wrong ; and to prevent 
this, let some branch of general science be always before 
your mind Thus pleasant and profitable employ- 
ment will prevent the tedium that leads to evil company. 

"4. Abstain from visiting public houses altogether." 
This he reasons out at some length. 

"5. Shun the society of such men as love to sit in the 
tavern. Company — bad company — is the curse of life. 
Shall a man who has an intelligent wife and sweet babes at 
home, — shall such a man be at a loss for company? .... 
'But, somehow, you have got entangled with certain men, 
and it is difficult to get away.' I know it. I know that 
they have even dragged you into the bar by main force. 
But, stop ! let us not blame them altogether. Had the 
house been on fire, and had they then attempted to drag 
you into the flames, would they have succeeded ? I have 
no doubt that you would have beaten the whole of them to 
the ground. You can, if you will, fight your way out from 
among these men. 

"6. My sixth direction is, Court the society of serious 
people. It is impossible to avoid being influenced by the 
company we keep. All the reasoning under the fifth rule 
applies here ; and therefore I pass to another. 

" 7. Frequent places of public and social worship. Here 
I think you are too often wanting to yourself; and here a 
physician lies under peculiar temptation. It is often his 
duty to labor in his profession on the Sabbath. This work 
of mercy, if he be not greatly on his guard, will diminish in 
his mind a sense of obligation to obey the Fourth Com- 
mandment : and he who forms a habit of thinking lightly 
of any part of God's revealed will, is very liable to be led 
on to similar thoughts about other parts. The question is, 
therefore, of immense importance, — How shall a physician 
preserve upon his mind a due reverential regard for the 
Sabbath-day? I answer,— 



136 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

" ist. Let. him, when called upon, satisfy himself that 
the case is one of real necessity, and not one of those that 
have been put off for three or four days, in order to save 
time, by sending for the doctor and taking medicine on 
the Sabbath. 

" 2d. Let him either never charge for the labors of the 
Sabbath, or, if he charge the rich, let him give the fee to 
the poor or to some object of Christian charity. Then 
will it be indeed a work of mercy. This was Dr. Rush's 
practice ; and it is easy to see how it will aid in judging 
of the necessity of each case. The contrary custom pre- 
sents to the mind of the physician a moneyed temptation to 
labor on the Lord's day, without the call of necessity and 
mercy. If people know you will not come on the Sabbath 
unless it be a case of urgent necessity, they will send for 
you before or wait till after that holy day is over. Dr. Rush 
made it a rule to attend at least once every Sabbath at a 
place of worship. 

"8. Total abstinence from evervthing intoxi- 
cating. I have long been of opinion, and so have you, 
and so have all reflecting men, that for a man of intemperate 
habits to break off by degrees, using it moderately, is an im- 
possibility. The laws of matter and of mind must be changed 
before this can be. I had been of the opinion that total 
abstinence from ardent spirits might suffice ; but I now 
doubt it. I fear the constitution that has been accustomed 
to artificial stimulants will foster the appetite, by the use 
of any of the milder stimulants. Even fermented drinks 
will keep alive the terrible thirst when once awakened ; 
and that fell appetite can only die of starvation. It will 
live so long as any food for it is supplied. Here, then, are 
the remedies which I prescribe. They commend them- 
selves to your reason. There is no quackery ; they are 
infallible," etc. 

These extracts, particularly the last, show that Mr. Junkin 
was years ahead of his times in the philosophy, the theory, 
and the practical measures of the temperance reformation. 
For, ten years after the date of the last of these letters, the 
writer of these passages was .pronounced an extremist, for 
advocating abstinence from wines and the milder drinks. 



PUBLIC CONFIDENCE. 



137 



The reader may be curious to know whether these letters 
accomplished the object for which they were written. It is 
not known that they did. The fact of their having been 
written remained, so far as the writer is informed, a secret 
between their author and his wife, on the one side, and the 
recipient on the other. Although a member of Dr. Jun- 
kin's family at the time most of them were written, the 
biographer knew nothing of them until he found the copies 
among his deceased brother's papers. The eminent phy- 
sician to whom they were addressed did not seem, at the 
time, to have fully yielded to their reasonings and remon- 
strances ; but we are happy to add that a few years later he 
resumed his manhood, and, by God's grace, it is believed, 
became an exemplary man and a member of the Presbyte- 
rian Church. Whether the good seed sown by the faithful 
pastor, and watered with his tears and prayers, had any 
direct influence in working the happy change, is known 
only to God and to the physician himself. 

Thus in the humble sphere of the village and rural Pas- 
tor and Editor, did the subject of this memoir employ his 
time and talents for a little more than eleven years, ma- 
turing his powers for a wider range and a higher sphere 
of usefulness in the years to follow. His reputation as a 
scholar, a thinker, a preacher, a debater, and a writer, had 
extended far beyond the region of his immediate labors. 
Many precious seasons of encouragement in his work had 
brightened these years of toil and trial. Confidence in the 
purity of his motives, the correctness of his principles, the 
integrity of his life, the faithfulness and courage of his 
efforts, and the general wisdom of his measures, had slowly 
but steadily grown upon the public mind. Admiration for 
his talents, and love to his person, were in thousands strong, 
in many enthusiastic. And whilst some, even of his best 
friends, thought that a less rigid and a more compromising 
line of policy might have accomplished as much good and 



138 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

at less sacrifice on his part, yet all conceded that he had 
not passed, indeed, that he had not yet reached the zenith 
of his popularity and usefulness, when, in God's providence, 
he was summoned to another field of labor. All conceded, 
that at the time he departed from Milton, he was more 
admired, trusted, and loved than at any previous period of 
his sojourn there. For that departure Providence was now 
preparing the way. 

Mr. Junkin had, not long after his union with the Pres- 
bytery of Northumberland, been sent by that Presbytery 
as a commissioner to the General Assembly of 1826. " In 
this body I felt so timid, that I fairly quivered when the 
Clerk, in reading the roll, came near to my name. I 
could scarcely speak enough to say 'Here!'"* Strange, 
that nerves that never trembled when maintaining the right 
in opposition to exasperated sons of Belial, should " quiver" 
when surrounded by the venerable and distinguished minis- 
ters of the church in a solemn assembly. 

"At this time the semi-Pelagian controversy was about 
rising in the Presbyterian Church. The American Educa- 
tion Society, through its Presbyterian branch, was liberally 
aiding our candidates. Rev. Wm. T. Hamilton, as its 
agent, visited Milton, and I got a scholarship subscribed 
in my church. With some zeal I entered into the plan, 
not then understanding, in all its complications, the whole 
bearing of the scheme. "f 

This shows his readiness to co-operate in every under- 
taking that appeared to make for the advancement of the 
cause of Christ. He afterwards became convinced that 
this society, in connection with the Home Missionary So- 
ciety, with which he also had co-operated, being external 
to the Presbyterian Church, yet working within it, exerted 
influences unfavorable to its purity and peace. He thought 
that the system pursued by the Education Society at that 

* Rem. t Rem - 



IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



■39 



time of taking vouchers of indebtedness from its benefici- 
aries, to be paid after they entered the ministry, tended to 
enthral the young men, and gave this Society a power over 
them which destroyed their independence, and bound them, 
not so much by ties of gratitude as by pecuniary obliga- 
tions, to the Society to which these notes were payable, 
and, in this way, gave to the officers of the Society an 
undue control over the ministers of the church who had 
been aided by them. But, at this date, the questions per- 
taining to voluntary associations for such purposes, as dis- 
tinguished from ecclesiastical organization, had not risen 
into prominence, and Mr. J. was active in co-operation 
with both these Societies, as also with the American Board 
of Foreign Missions. The Milton Missionary Society, 
which he was instrumental in organizing, was auxiliary to 
the latter, and, as the Presbyterian Church at that time had 
no general missionary organization, he did what he could 
through the American Board. 

In 1829 he was again commissioned to the General As- 
sembly, and the next year also. This second appointment 
was made by his brethren both as a token of their confi- 
dence, and to facilitate his attendance upon the ordination 
of his nephew, the (now) Rev. Dr. John M. Dickey, who 
was ordained pastor of the church of New Castle, Delaware. 
In both these last-mentioned Assemblies he saw indices of 
the rising controversy, in which he was afterwards involved. 
There had appeared in the first General Assembly of which he 
was a member, some of the difficulties growing out of " The 
Plan of Union" of 180 x. A Mr. Bissell, from the Presby- 
tery of Rochester, who was not a ruling elder, but only a 
"committeeman," appeared as a commissioner, and, after 
some opposition, was admitted as a member of the Assem- 
bly. Against this action forty-two members protested. A 
similar case had occurred in 1820, and continued to recur 
until the crisis of 1837 was brought on. 



I4 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

"It was whilst sitting in the Assembly of 1830 that 
Brother Robert Steel, pastor of Abington, came to me and 
told me of the vacancy that had just occurred, by the resig- 
nation of Professor Monteith, in the presidency of the 
' Manual Labor Academy of Pennsylvania' at Germantown, 
and called my attention to it as a field of very promising 
labor. Mr. Steel took me out to visit the Academy. The 
whole enterprise was so nearly what I had previously con- 
ceived as a mode of education, that, upon my friend's 
urgency, I consented to become a candidate, convinced 
that I might be more useful in bringing into the ministry 
men of the right stamp, and thus do more than I could in 
my pastoral position. There was, too, in the vicinity of 
the Academy, a fine church, and a small nucleus of a con- 
gregation, offering a pretty good field of labor. The elec- 
tion took place, and in due time I was informed of my 
having been appointed. Even then, parties had been so 
far arrayed in Philadelphia, that some members of the Board 
objected to me as too 'Old School;' but these objections 
were overruled."* 

He, after prayerful and careful consideration of the sub- 
ject, became convinced that the indications of God's pro- 
vidence pointed him to the field of Education as the one 
for his future toils, and, with him, such a conviction was 
the immediate precursor of action. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Mutual Regrets of Parting — Farewell Sermons — Removal to Germantown 
— Entrance upon Duty — State of the Institution — Revived Efficiency — 
Practical Difficulties of Location — Contemplated Removal. 

THE tidings that Mr. Junkin had been invited to an- 
other field of labor spread rapidly through his con- 
gregations, and throughout the district in which he had 
been so long prominent and so much beloved, and it was re- 
ceived with unfeigned sorrow. To a man of his deep and 
sensitive emotional nature, the thought of such a change 
awakened the tenderest feelings. He could not, without 
great pain to his natural sensibilities, tear away from so 
many dear friends. But with him, though a man of strong 
feeling, conscience and judgment always held control. He 
made prompt preparations for the removal. He delivered 
farewell discourses in each of his congregations, and in 
several of the places where he had preached with frequency. 
In the Valley he delivered his last discourse on July 28th, 
and at Penuel and Shiloh, August 8th, 1830. These were 
attended by crowds of people, and Bochim was the proper 
name for each occasion, for there were weepings such as 
had never before been known on a like occasion in that 
country. Rev. iii. 11 and II. Tim. i. 13 were the subjects 
of his sermons: " Hold that fast which thou hast, that no 
man take thy crown." "Hold fast the form of sound 
words, which thou hast heard of me," etc. And those who 
heard them said that he had surpassed himself in strength 
and tenderness. 

He proceeded immediately to Germantown, and entered 
upon public duty there ; for on the next Sabbath after his 

(Mi) 



! 4 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

farewell at Milton we find him occupying the pulpit at the 
former place. 

The institution over which he was now called to preside 
had been inaugurated, a few years before, by some philan- 
thropic gentlemen of the Presbyterian Church, in and 
around Philadelphia, with a view to facilitate the educa- 
tion of young men for the Christian ministry. Three 
principal objects were aimed at in its plan. First, to pre- 
serve the health of students, and promote bodily develop- 
ment, by regular exercise at manual labor ; secondly, to 
enable young men in moderate circumstances to defray a 
part of the expenses of their education, by laboring a por- 
tion of each day ; and thus, thirdly, to encourage a greater 
number to seek a thorough education, especially with a 
view to increasing the ranks of the Gospel ministry. 

Mr. Junkin, as we have seen, had already attempted the 
system, upon a small scale, at his home in Milton, and his 
heart was already in the scheme. He was also peculiarly 
qualified for the station, not merely by the force of his 
talents and the maturity of his scholarship and aptness to 
teach, but also by his power of systematic organizing, and 
by a wonderful, almost instinctive, skill in mechanics and 
agriculture. Of these last he had practical knowledge, un- 
usual in an educated man. He entered upon his educa- 
tional career with energy and enthusiasm. The institution, 
which had been for some time in a languishing condition, 
began to revive. Students flocked to it, until no more 
could be received for want of accommodations. Many 
young men from the region of the Susquehanna followed 
him to Germantown, attracted by their love to his person 
and confidence in his ability. But the institution was 
without funds. A debt rested upon the real estate that 
had been purchased for its accommodation, and Mr. 
Junkin soon found, that unless he advanced funds out of 
his private fortune to purchase materials for the farm and 



REVIVED EFFICIENCY. 



1 43 



the workshops, as well as some needed appliances of edu- 
cation, the enterprise would not succeed. The novelty of 
the undertaking had somewhat worn off, under the admin- 
istration of his predecessors. A measure of apathy had in- 
vaded the Board of Trustees, with the exception of a few 
of the Ministers ; and Mr. J. soon discovered, that the en- 
tire responsibility of carrying forward the undertaking was 
devolved upon himself. He had to employ professors, and 
meet all pecuniary claims, upon his own responsibility, with 
little co-operation from those who had, with apparent zeal 
for the cause, called him from his pastorate to these toils 
and responsibilities. But he was not a man to become 
soon discouraged. His heart and hands were both in the 
work, and it went forward. In the twenty months of his 
administration the school continued to flourish, and many 
young men, who have since made their mark in the learned 
professions, and in the councils of States and the nation, 
obtained part of their education in this school. It assumed, 
indeed, very much the character of a College, with its 
literary societies, and other stimulants and aids to improve- 
ment. That eminent scholar, philosopher, and educator 
Charles F. McCay, afterwards LL.D., and Professor of 
Natural Philosophy in the University of Georgia, and 
President of the College of South Carolina, was his very 
efficient coadjutor in the instruction. Mr. J.'s brother, 
the writer of these pages, was for a time teacher in lan- 
guages, and others, with these, gave efficiency to the in- 
struction. 

But a year's experiment convinced the Principal, that 
Germantown was not a proper location for the Academy. 
The staples of subsistence were as costly as in the City, 
whilst the material for the workshops had to be purchased 
at city prices, brought out over a turnpike at great cost of 
transportation, under heavy tolls, and then the manufac- 
tures returned at similar cost to the City, to compete in the 



I44 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

market with the products of city workmen, subject to none 
of these charges. Boxes and trunks, in which to pack 
goods for shipment, were the articles principally manufac- 
tured in the shops of the school, and the students could 
not, with such odds against them, compete with the city 
workmen. But, as they were paid a stipulated price per 
hour for their labor, the losses fell upon the institution, i.e. 
upon the Principal. 

These difficulties were laid before the Board of Trustees, 
who readily appreciated them ; and it was resolved to re- 
move the Academy to a more favorable location. A site 
on the banks of the Delaware, above the City, where the 
advantage of water transportation could be obtained, was 
selected, and steps began to be taken for the removal. But 
of course the property at Germantown must be sold, the 
new premises purchased, and buildings erected. These 
measures required time. Meanwhile the institution went 
vigorously on. But events were providentially evolving 
that gave a different direction to the future of Mr. Junkin, 
and of the Academy. These must be now narrated. 

In a future chapter it will be necessary to detail the gradual 
rise of that controversy which resulted, in 1838, in the 
disruption of the Presbyterian Church. Symptoms of that 
great struggle began to show themselves in 1820, before 
Dr. Junkin became a member of the body. In 1831 the 
parties, which had long been forming under influences here- 
after to be described, stood out in distinct array. The 
lines had been partially drawn the preceding year ; but in 
1 83 1 it was made a question in the election of Moderator, 
the choice falling upon Dr. Beman, of Troy, a man identi- 
fied with the intenser type of the new Theology, and with 
the movements of the Voluntary Societies, who proposed to 
conduct the educational and missionary work of the church. 
And although no very decided step was taken by the 
majority of that year, it being quite small, its decisions 



OPPOSITION TO MR. BARNES. 



45 



and protests called out no little feeling ; and nearly every- 
body took sides. It was not to be expected, that a minis- 
ter of Mr. Junkin's decided character and pronounced 
Presbyterianism could remain neutral. He of course sided 
with the "Old School;" and events soon occurred in his 
own Presbytery (Philadelphia, — for he had become a mem- 
ber of it in the fall of 1830), which not only precluded 
the possibility of his remaining neutral, but also, in con- 
nection with other providences, led him to make that 
change in the field of his labors which resulted in the 
founding of Lafayette College. 

In the Board of Trustees of the Academy were some 
men of New England origin, who naturally sympathized 
with the "New School" party in the church. Added to 
these were some who sympathized with Mr. Barnes in 
his troubles with the Presbytery and Synod of Philadelphia 
and in the General Assembly. That gentleman had 
preached and published at Morristown, N. J., where he was 
pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of the place, a 
sermon entitled "The Way of Salvation." Shortly after 
this, and chiefly upon the merits of this sermon, Mr. 
Barnes was called to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian 
Church of Philadelphia. When the call was presented to 
the Presbytery of Philadelphia, and leave asked by the 
congregation to prosecute it, opposition was made to grant- 
ing leave on account of the errors in doctrine alleged to be 
contained in that discourse, and on account of the fact, 
that Mr. Barnes had never preached before the congrega- 
tion that called him. The church which had called Mr. 
Barnes was large and influential with the Presbytery, and 
a majority voted to grant leave to prosecute the call. 

Shortly after this a meeting of the Presbytery pro re nata 

was called for the purpose of receiving Mr. Barnes, and, 

if the way should be clear, taking steps for his installation. 

At this meeting, after reading the minutes of the previous 

13 



146 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

meeting relating to his case, it was moved that he be re- 
ceived ; and, after some discussion, Dr. Ely moved that this 
motion be postponed "in order that before deciding it any 
member of the Presbytery, who may deem it necessary, 
may ask of Mr. Barnes such explanations of his doctrinal 
views as may be deemed necessary." This motion was 
lost (18 to 20), and Mr. Barnes was received as a member 
of Presbytery. Charges were then formally tabled against 
Mr. Barnes, by the Rev. Brogun Hoff, for unsoundness in 
the faith, as a bar to his installation ; but the Moderator, 
who sympathized with the majority, decided that they were 
out of order, on the grounds that they would be new busi- 
ness at a pro re nata meeting. The minority contended 
that it was pertinent to the business for which the Presby- 
tery was called, and belonged to the question of the way 
being clear. Dr. Ely appealed from this decision, but the 
majority sustained the decision, and installed Mr. Barnes 
on the 25th of June following. These events took place 
in April, 1830, before Mr. Junkin became a member of the 
Presbytery. The minority, with the venerable Dr. Ashbel 
Green at their head, complained of these proceedings to 
the Synod of Philadelphia. The Synod, which met at 
Lancaster in the following October (1830), sustained the 
complaint, and adopted two resolutions explanatory of their 
decision, and mandatory to the Presbytery, — 1st, That the 
Presbytery gave just ground of complaint in not allowing 
the examination of Mr. Barnes in view of his published 
sermon; and 2d, Enjoining the Presbytery "to hear and 
decide on the objections to the orthodoxy of the sermon 
of Mr. Barnes, and to take such order on the whole sub- 
ject as is required by a regard to the purity of the church 
and its acknowledged doctrine and order." (Minutes of 
Synod, p. 13; also Baird's Digest, p. 650.) 

Up to this point, Mr. Junkin had taken no active part in 
this unhappy controversy ; and although he no doubt felt 



ILL-FEELING IN THE PRESBYTERY. 



147 



that the judgment of the Synod was a righteous one, he had 
remained quiet, unwilling needlessly to jeopard the in- 
terests of the institution over which he presided, by taking 
unnecessary part in a matter upon which the Trustees of it 
were divided in opinion. But events soon forced him, 
either to prove recreant to his convictions of right and of 
fair dealing, or to stand in defence of them. 

The Presbytery of Philadelphia, at the close of the 
Synod, was called together by the Moderator, and rather 
hastily adjourned to meet in Philadelphia, at a time so 
soon (twenty-five hours) after the rising of the Synod as to 
make it almost physically impossible for all the members 
to get to the meeting, unless they could have obtained 
seats in the coaches that first left Lancaster. This the 
"Old School" members did not succeed in doing, as did 
their shrewder brethren, and of course were delayed in 
getting to the meeting. Mr. Junkin, having his own con- 
veyance, got to the meeting in season, still not suspecting 
that the majority would seriously contemplate taking up 
the case of Mr. Barnes, in the absence, under such circum- 
stances, of so many of the members. And when the effort 
was made, his love of fair dealing compelled him to resist 
it. He warned and besought his brethren not to do a 
thing which even honorable men of the world would con- 
demn. He and a few others continued their resistance 
until the delayed brethren arrived. 

Among other illustrations which he employed upon 
the occasion, was that such a procedure would prove, like 
a bucket of live coals thoughtlessly placed near combustible 
material, the cause of a conflagration which they all might 
deplore. Baffled by the man's firmness, there was some 
feeling aroused in the Presbytery against him ; and a dis- 
tinguished elder of the Presbytery, who was a member of 
the Board of Trustees of the Academy, said, with some 
bitterness, " Mr. Junkin's bucket of coals may make his 



l 4 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

present place too hot for him." From that time forth it 
became manifest, that he could not expect such co-opera- 
tion of the entire Board as assured ultimate success. Still, 
as there was no overt opposition, he continued to toil on, 
and the institution retained its prosperity, although at 
heavy cost to its Principal. 

During the time of his residence at Germantown, Mr. 
Junkin preached the gospel almost every Sabbath, either 
in that place, in Philadelphia, or elsewhere. He main- 
tained a Bible-class in the Institution, and a weekly prayer- 
meeting ; and was ever ready to lend a helping hand in 
any evangelical effort. Here, as in his former charge, his 
Bible-classes were schools of rich instruction, and many of 
his pupils, who afterwards entered the ministry, have said 
that they had derived from his Bible-class instructions a 
large proportion of their theological knowledge. In Ger- 
mantown, as in his previous fields of labor, he won many 
hearts, and his departure was a matter of sincere and 
general regret. Part of the time of his sojourn in German- 
town, the venerable and lovely Dr. Wm. Neill was the 
stated supply of the church, and the intercourse between 
him and Mr. Junkin was of the most fraternal kind. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Elected President of Lafayette College — Visits Easton — A College on Paper 
that ignored God — Presidency accepted — Removal of Pennsylvania M. L. 
Academy as to its entire Personnel to Easton — Incidents — Manual Labor 
System — Its Advantages and Difficulties — His Wonderful Labors — His 
Theory of Education — Progress. 

DURING the winter of 1832, the attention of Mr. 
Junkin was called to Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., 
as a better field for his labors in the cause of education 
than the one he was then occupying. His friend and 
former fellow-student, the Rev. Robert Steel (the late Dr. 
Steel, of Abington), was the instrument, in this instance 
also, of his removal. When on a visit to Easton, Mr. 
Steel's attention was directed to the nascent College at 
that place, and through him Mr. Junkin was approached 
with a tender of the presidency. 

The College as yet only existed on paper. A charter had 
been obtained in 1826 from the Legislature, granting to a 
Board of Trustees ample franchises for a college, in which 
military instruction and discipline were to be combined 
with the usual college curriculum; and repeated efforts had 
been made to organize and set it in operation. But one 
element of its constitution, as proposed by the leading 
persons in the enterprise, proved fatal to their earlier 
efforts, — they avowed the intention of founding a college 
in which religion should have no place, and in which no 
Minister of the Gospel of any sect should hold office. The 
God whom they proposed to ignore thwarted all their 
efforts, and no endowment was obtained, no lands or 
buildings procured, and no professors or students. 
*3* (149) 



150 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKTN. 

In process of time some of the very men who proposed 
to found a college without God and religion, professed 
conversion, and became the friends of Christ; and then 
they turned to a Minister of "Jesus to help them to carry 
out their oft-defeated enterprise. Mr. Junkin was elected 
President, visited the place, and consented to accept 
upon certain conditions. These conditions were, that the 
charter should be so modified as to substitute manual labor 
instead of military drill, with such other changes as would 
adapt it to the ends of a manual labor college. These 
modifications of the charter were promptly obtained from 
the Legislature, then in session, through the energetic 
efforts of the President of the Board, the Hon. James 
Madison Porter. 

A farm of some seventy acres, with spacious mansion 
and other buildings, was leased for the temporary accom- 
modation of the institution. This farm lay on the south 
bank of the Lehigh, adjoining Easton, near to the site now 
occupied by the railroad station. Early in April, 1832, 
Mr. Junkin, having previously resigned the presidency of 
the Pennsylvania Manual Labor Academy, removed to 
Easton and commenced the college enterprise. The pro- 
fessors and nearly all the students of the Academy joined 
in this migration. Prof. McCay had been appointed to 
the Chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in the 
College ; and James I. Kuhn, Esq., was soon after appointed 
to the Chair of Ancient Languages. 

But every material appliance of a college had to be 
created. Temporary recitation-rooms and shops were 
erected, and in a short time affairs assumed the state of 
order and energy, which the eye and the hand of Mr. 
Junkin always evoked. There were no funds for the 
endowment of the College, and the Board of Trustees, 
having no property, had, as a Board, no credit. The 
President was therefore under the necessity of assuming, as 



ESS A YS ON ED UCA TION. 



J5 1 



in his former field, all pecuniary responsibility, and to de- 
pend upon the income of the institution for indemnity. 
Some subscriptions were made by citizens of Easton ; but 
no funds, at all adequate even to the beginning of such an 
enterprise, had been provided. 

But the President had strong faith in God and in the 
value and importance of the enterprise, and he went for- 
ward. Students came in encouraging numbers ; the liter- 
ary societies that had existed in the Academy at German- 
town resumed and continued their functions, and all the 
arrangements for giving thorough instruction were in- 
creased. 

So soon as the institution was placed in working order, 
so that his presence was not imperatively necessary, Mr. 
Junkin entered upon the arduous and self-denying duty of 
collecting funds for erecting a college edifice, and for pro- 
viding other necessary appliances of education. In prose- 
cuting this part of the work, he travelled extensively and 
toiled arduously, in visiting churches and individuals. He 
preached and made addresses frequently, wrote series after 
series of articles for the press, explanatory of the under- 
taking in which he was engaged, and performed an amount 
of labor that seemed impossible for the powers of one man to 
accomplish. Over the signature ' ' Fellenberg, ' ' he published 
a series of essays on education, and the connection of study 
with physical culture, by means of manual labor. These 
were marked by great vigor of thought and style, and were 
extensively read. He was very sanguine in the hope, that 
"the health-preserving labor of the hands would defray 
the expenses of education;" and at this period, the system 
was much in vogue and was growing in popularity. His 
writings and addresses contributed largely to increase the 
public confidence in the system ; and not only those stu- 
dents whose slender means made it necessary, but even 
the sons of the wealthy, resorted to this and similar institu- 



5 2 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 



tions, in order to avoid that prostration of the physical 
frame that is too often the price of a course of college 
study. 

Nor did Dr. Junkin ever lose confidence in the system 
which he had so eloquently advocated, and which he sac- 
rificed so much to inaugurate. He continued always to 
believe that it is the normal mode of educating human 
beings ; and, whilst he was not blind to the intrinsic, as 
well as the adventitious difficulties of the system, he never 
faltered in the belief that those difficulties could be largely 
forestalled, under proper organization and with adequate 
means, and that the valuable results would amply repay 
the hindrances to be removed. The intrinsic obstacles lay 
in the difficulty of giving employment to all the students, 
and at the same time securing regularity in study and reci- 
tations, — in the difficulty of passing from some kinds of 
labor to study or the class-room, of securing proper alter- 
nations of study and labor, and of awarding just compen- 
sation for labor, so that the lazy and unskilled might not 
be rewarded as much as the skilful and industrious. 

The adventitious difficulties lay in the prejudices of 
society, the foolish ideas that labor is degrading, that to 
ply a mechanic or agricultural art is unworthy the gentle- 
man, and that the student ought not to be robust and 
vigorous, but pale and effeminate. Prejudices against in- 
terference with the business of workmen in the regular 
trade also embarrass an institution of the kind. Trades- 
people look with jealousy upon any efforts at production 
on the part of persons whose main business is not to pro- 
duce. The same objections that are raised against the pro- 
ducts of penitentiary labor are started against the products 
of a manual labor school or college, and it is difficult, on 
this account, to find fair and ready market for them. 

To insure the success of this system over all these diffi- 
culties and against all these prejudices, would have required 



THEORY OF EDUCATION. 



153 



at least as large an endowment as is deemed requisite to 
establish a college upon the old system, and would have 
demanded the earnest co-operation of a Board of Trust, a 
Faculty with their hearts in the work, and a fair measure 
of public confidence in the system. But for a single indi- 
vidual, with but a limited private fortune, without any 
endowment either to support professors or to provide ap- 
pliances of education and workshops, tools and a stock of 
material for the manual labor department, it was an under- 
taking requiring strong faith and indomitable energy, — an 
undertaking, the success of which could hardly be expected 
upon any basis of ordinary calculation. But Mr. Junkin's 
whole soul was intent upon the work of education, and 
especially upon the work of raising up well-educated and 
efficient Ministers of the Gospel. His idea of education 
was, that it consisted in drawing out all the powers of the 
human being, physical, mental, and spiritual, developing 
these powers by appropriate exercise, and training them to 
appropriate ends. He held that, in order to normal edu- 
cation, the entire human trinity — body, soul, and spirit — 
must be consentaneously and proportionately developed ; 
and that if either of the parts of the man — physical, mental, 
or moral — be cultured to the neglect of the others, it will 
result in a monstrous development, and not in a perfect 
man. "Mens sana in corpore sano," was what he aimed 
to produce in the case of every student placed under his 
care ; and perhaps no educator of his period bestowed so 
much care and effort to secure that result. And, as he be- 
lieved that useful employment — exercise with a valuable 
aim and with palpable and useful results — is best adapted 
to physical development in connection with mental and 
moral culture, his confidence in the manual labor system 
was never shaken. So long as his first connection with 
Lafayette College lasted, he maintained that system in the 
face of difficulties that would have appalled any other man. 



I5 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

And had he possessed the means of giving the system a 
fair and full trial, it is the opinion of many that he would 
have demonstrated its value and practicability to the entire 
satisfaction of the public. As it was, // never failed in his 
hands. But its success in his hands was at great cost of 
money and toil. It was impossible to obtain a corps of 
teachers who sympathized in the system, or who had confi- 
dence in it. So far from this, his professors, whilst men 
of ability and scholarly attainment and skill as instructors, 
had been educated under the old system, and thought that 
a college must be just the copy of their several Alma 
Matres. They thought that the hands that held books 
ought not to hold tools, that it was more dignified to exert 
the muscles in hitting a ball than in driving a nail, in 
pitching a quoit than in pushing a plane or a handsaw, 
in wielding a bat than in handling the hoe. And with 
these prejudices in the minds even of their instructors, 
it was a much more difficult task than it would otherwise 
have been for the President to preserve among the students 
a proper sentiment in regard to the useful system of gym- 
nastics that he sought to introduce. And when to this we 
add the indifference or incredulity of the public, and the 
natural indolence of youth, it is a matter of wonder that 
the system was as successful as it was. 

When Mr. Junkin was translated to the Miami Univer- 
sity, the manual labor system gradually fell into disuse in 
Lafayette College ; and, upon his being recalled to the 
presidency of the latter, four years afterward, he found it 
so far lost sight of that it was only restored as a voluntary 
system, — i.e. only those students worked who desired to 
do it. 

No mind, unacquainted with the detail of facts, can 
form any adequate conception of the amount of care, vexa- 
tion, wearing responsibility, mental exertion, and bodily toil 
involved in establishing a college, even upon the ordinary 



plan. All these are vastly augmented and intensified in the 
case of a manual labor college, in which, to the toils and 
cares of ordinary administration, are added the solicitude 
and labors of extensive workshops, farming and gardening 
operations, the laying in of material, the superintendence 
of labor, the keeping separate accounts of the labor of 
each student, the sale of proceeds, the purchase of subsist- 
ence for so large a body of pupils, the control of boarding 
establishments, and many other cares; all of which devolved 
upon the President. For, although he appointed business 
agents, he had to plan for the whole, superintend the whole, 
and was personally and pecuniarily responsible for all. Yet 
did Mr. Junkin endure it all, and not only did his share of 
the teaching, after the higher college classes were organ- 
ized, but managed the whole complicated enterprise, at 
home and abroad. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The Pennsylvania Manual Labor Academy the Nucleus of Lafayette — 
Progress of the Latter Institution — Labors in the Cause of General 
Education — Influence upon the Legislature — Governor Wolf — Thaddeus 
Stevens — Dr. J. one of the Founders of the Pennsylvania System — Estab- 
lished the First Normal School — College Site bought — Edifice begun — 
Completed — Example — Mrs. Junkin. 

THE fact that, with the exception of two or three who 
were ready to enter the higher classes in college, all 
the students of the institution at Germantown followed or 
accompanied him to Easton, attests the confidence which 
they and their parents reposed in Dr. Junkin as an edu- 
cator. Indeed, the school at Germantown, in almost its 
entire personnel, became the nucleus of Lafayette College. 
Professor McCay continued in the Department of Mathe- 
matics and Philosophy, and Professor Kuhn, soon after, 
entered upon the duties of the Chair of Languages. Acces- 
sions to the ranks of the students came in numbers beyond 
the capacity of the buildings to receive them. And it 
ought to be recorded to the honor of the noble band of 
youth that followed Mr. Junkin to this new scene of his 
toils, that they zealously co-operated with him in the neces- 
sary efforts to get the institution under way in the new 
locality, and cheerfully submitted to the inconvenience 
and discomfort occasioned by their straitened quarters and 
by the lack of adaptation of the buildings to the pur- 
poses of a college. With their own hands they erected 
temporary buildings to accommodate the increasing num- 
bers of students, until more permanent edifices could be 
erected. 

The lands, being more extensive than those at German- 
(156) 



LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 



157 



town, offered more scope for agricultural labor by the stu- 
dents. But workshops were provided, and facilities for 
mechanical labor were offered, whilst the regular routine 
of studies was effectively kept up. By the Presbyterian 
portion of the population of Easton and the region of 
which it is the centre, and by a goodly number of the other 
citizens, the College was warmly welcomed. But by others 
it was looked upon with coldness, and by some with aver- 
sion, and for a time it had to struggle against adverse influ- 
ences. In the end, however, it won its way to the confi- 
dence of the community, and became one of its cherished 
institutions. 

The Board of Trustees was, at the time of Dr. Junkin's 
advent, and for a considerable time after (for it is a close 
corporation), composed of a great variety of men, of di- 
verse positions in life, and of various religious predilec- 
tions, a few of whom knew something of colleges, but the 
great majority had no knowledge of the necessities and 
workings of such institutions. Of course, from a body 
thus constituted, the President could not expect that hearty 
and intelligent co-operation which would have been afforded 
by men more familiar with the processes of higher educa- 
tion. But there were a few earnest sympathizers in the 
enterprise, both in and out of the Board, who deserve the 
gratitude of the friends of the College. Still, the burden 
rested upon the President ; and if the detail of his toils, 
trials, and sacrifices in the founding of Lafayette College 
should be here recorded, it would amaze the reader, and 
he would wonder how any one man could endure the 
amount of labor, bodily and mental, which he actually per- 
formed ; and, much more, that it could be borne in con- 
nection with such heavy anxieties as must have continually 
pressed upon his mind and heart. He set the students an 
example not only of diligence in study, but of alacrity in 
manual labor. He very often put to his hand, in the quarry, 
14 



l 5 S LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

in the workshop, or on the farm, and in the various parts 
of the work of erecting buildings, fences, and the nameless 
other details of preparing college accommodations and 
grounds. The students would work but a few hours at a 
time ; the writer has known the President to toil whole 
days at a time, accomplishing much more work in a given 
period than the most expert laborers are wont to do. 
"Whatsoever his hand found to do, he did it with his 
might," and his energetic example was felt throughout the 
whole institution. 

Nor were his labors confined to the institution itself. He 
travelled extensively in efforts to collect funds, to awaken 
public interest in the enterprise, and to induce the Legisla- 
ture of the Commonwealth to appropriate pecuniary aid. 
He made many visits to the State Capital, and by public 
addresses, by personal interviews, by letters, and by me- 
morials he labored to awaken an interest not only in the 
particular institution which he represented, but in the cause 
of general education. 

Perhaps no citizen of the Commonwealth contributed 
more, by personal labor and influence, towards the inau- 
guration of the Public School System of Pennsylvania, 
than did Dr. Junkin. In his frequent public addresses, 
in different parts of the State, and in his numerous publi- 
cations, he urged upon the citizens and upon the Legis- 
lature the necessity of ampler facilities for the universal 
education of the people. He tried to arouse the natives 
of the State to a sense of shame, by pointing to the fact, 
that, for want of proper systems of education, a large pro- 
portion of the Judges and other prominent public func- 
tionaries of the State were natives of other States. He 
urged his broad and liberal views of the subject upon the 
committees of education of the Legislature. And some 
of the ablest reports of these committees were framed 
chiefly by him, during the years 1833 to 1837. 



PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. I5g 

At the time Dr. Junkin was urging this great interest 
upon the State Legislature, the Hon. George Wolf was 
Governor of the Commonwealth. He was a citizen of 
Easton at the time of his election, and a Trustee of Lafa- 
yette College, and it was the glory of his administration, 
that the entire weight of his official position was thrown 
in favor of a general system of education. With him Dr. 
Junkin had frequent conferences upon the subject, and to 
his urgency may, in some degree, be attributed the zeal 
and explicitness with which that excellent chief magistrate 
urged the subject of general education in his messages to 
the General Assembly of the State. For this he was cen- 
sured by many of his own party, the scheme of general 
education by State aid being as yet far from popular. It 
was in reply to some of these animadversions, that the late 
Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, then a representative from Adams 
County and a political opponent of the Governor, delivered 
one of his most eloquent speeches in advocacy of educa- 
tion, and in defence of the Governor's course in regard to 
it. In this speech Mr. Stevens uttered the memorable 
words, " I love the man whose banner streams in light !" 

Dr. Junkin may justly be classed among the founders of 
the Public School System of Pennsylvania. He was not a 
man of one idea. His conceptions of the great theme of 
human education were too broad to permit him to confine 
his efforts to the one enterprise with which he stood con- 
nected, and accordingly, wherever he went, in his agency 
for the College, he discoursed on education in all its inter- 
ests and bearings. He unfolded the philosophy of educa- 
tion in a style adapted to the masses. He showed the con- 
nection between the college or university and all schools 
of inferior grade, and inculcated the idea that all should 
be parts of one grand system, so connected together as to 
be co-operative and mutually auxiliary to each other and 
the whole. Having gathered information in regard to the 



160 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK'IN. 

most improved modes of education, both in Europe and 
in other sections of our own country, he was probably in 
advance of any other native Pennsylvanian in the maturity 
of his opinions upon the subject. So far as is known to 
the writer, he was the first to insist that the business of 
teaching should be raised to the dignity and the immuni- 
ties of a Profession. He was the first to advocate the es- 
tablishment of normal schools for the training of teachers, 
and, as we shall see, he established, at his own cost, the 
first normal school in the Commonwealth. In his applica- 
tions to the Legislature for aid, he was subjected to frequent 
disappointments and delays. His brother-in-law, Hon. 
Walter Oliver, the representative from Mercer County, ex- 
erted all his influence to further the interests of Lafayette 
and other colleges. Mr. Stevens, also, was forward and 
earnest in the good work, and others lent a helping hand. 
Several times a Bill to aid Lafayette and other colleges 
came to a third reading by hopeful majorities, and then 
was defeated. These failures were not attributable to the 
opposition of the members who voted "nay" to the cause 
of education, so much as to dread of their constituents, 
for in most of the counties the people were prejudiced 
against aiding colleges by State bounty. 

Still Dr. Junkin persevered, amidst all discouragements, 
until finally a law was passed appropriating to Lafayette 
and Pennsylvania Colleges a few thousand dollars. But 
previous to this, encouraged by the sums which the Presi- 
dent had collected from churches and individuals, the 
Trustees ventured, in the winter of 1833, to purchase the 
land upon which the College now stands, and, in the fol- 
lowing spring, to commence the erection of a college 
edifice. The building was planned by the President ; and 
early in March, 1833, in the presence of some of the 
Trustees, the students, and a few of the citizens, he, with 
his own hands, broke ground and removed the first spade- 



INAUGURATION. ^i 

fuls of earth from the site of the foundation. On the 4th 
day of July following, attended by a civic and military pro- 
cession, assisted by the Hon. James M. Porter, President 
of the Board of Trustees, he laid the corner-stone ; and 
the building progressed slowly yet steadily towards com- 
pletion, so that upon the last of March, 1834, it was occu- 
pied by the Faculty and students. 

It may as well be here recorded, that a little more than 
thirty-four years after laying the corner-stone of the main 
building, he, by invitation, laid the corner-stone of the 
eastern extension of the edifice, at a time when the enter- 
prise which he had begun in faith, more than thirty-five 
years before, had attained to eminent success, and Lafa- 
yette College had taken rank with the best endowed and 
the best manned and appointed Universities of the conti- 
nent. 

He was formally inaugurated President of the College 
on the 1st of May, 1834, with appropriate formalities. On 
this occasion prayer was offered by the Rev. Isaac N. 
Candee, then of Belvidere, N. J. (now Dr. Candee, of 
Illinois). The Hon. James M. Porter, President of the 
Board, made an address to the President and Professor 
Kuhn who was installed at the same time, performed the 
inaugural ceremony, and read the laws of the institution. 
A beautiful ode, adapted to the occasion, from the gifted 
pen of Mrs. J. L. Gray, was sung. Dr. Junkin delivered 
his inaugural address on the topic, "The true idea of 
education, and especially its religious element;" and the 
concluding prayer was offered by Rev. Mr. Macklin. Pro- 
fessor Kuhn is now, 187 1, an eminent lawyer in Pittsburg. 

Whilst the building was in progress, the exercises of the 
College, mental and manual, continued upon the rented 
premises already mentioned. Some of the labor upon the 
new site was performed by details of students, in working- 
hours. But on account of the distance, and the fact that 
14* 



1 62 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

most of the work was done by contract, this labor was 
limited chiefly to the excavation of the site and the level- 
ling of the grounds. The writer has often seen the Presi- 
dent of the College, at the head of a band of noble youth, 
who were not ashamed of honest toil, quarrying and re- 
moving rocks, and walling in and levelling off the grounds 
of the new College ; and the amazing strength and mechan- 
ical skill of the President made him a worthy example to 
his more youthful co-laborers. It may be thought that it 
was beneath the dignity of the chief of a literary institution 
thus to toil with his hands, and that he might have con- 
signed to hired laborers such work as he thus performed. 
But if it be remembered, that his great aim was to found an 
institution, in which " the health-preserving labor of the 
hands should defray the expenses of education," the pro- 
priety of his example will be confessed. He wished to 
banish from the minds of his pupils the shallow and un- 
American idea, that labor is dishonorable ; and he aimed 
to demonstrate before their eyes, that manual labor and 
earnest and effective study were not incompatible. And 
this he did. For at the very time he was thus toiling with 
his hands, he imparted instructions, of which his pupils 
speak with gratitude and admiration to this day; and it 
was during this period of toil that " Fellenberg" and his 
valuable work on Justification were written, whilst other 
labors, presently to be mentioned, were accomplished. 

It would be impossible for any one, not familiar with 
the details, to form an adequate estimate of the amount 
of labor, mental and bodily, which, during these years, 
Dr. Junkin performed. Before the work upon the college 
edifice was half completed, the funds began to fail; and 
the progress of the work depended upon his success in 
collecting money. This called for an extensive and labo- 
rious correspondence, for frequent journeys, for much toil 
in speaking and canvassing, and for frequent appeals 



QUESTIONS OF DUTY. 163 

through the newspapers; whilst the consciousness of the 
heavy personal responsibilities which he incurred, and his 
solicitude for his family and for the students, when away 
from them, rested with crushing anxiety upon him. Yet 
amid it all he was calm, cheerful, persistent ; and when 
others trembled for him, and despaired of the enterprise, 
his confidence seemed never to falter ! If the reader asks 
for the great secret of this, he has his answer in a single 
fact, — Dr. Junkin was a man of strong faith in Christ 

AND OF MUCH PRAYER ! 

He never entered upon any important undertaking with- 
out solemn self-examination and earnest prayer to God for 
direction. More than any man whom the writer has ever 
known, his constant inquiry was, "Lord, what wilt thou 
have me to do?" And he aimed maturely to consider 
every question of duty, begged of the Lord to help him to 
scrutinize his own motives ; and when fairly satisfied that 
he ought to enter upon a given enterprise, he dismissed 
doubt and hesitancy, and threw all his heart and all his 
powers into the undertaking. More than once did the 
writer of these lines join with others in the endeavor to 
persuade Dr. Junkin to abandon the college enterprise, to 
which there appeared so many hindrances and discourage- 
ments, and in which he seemed likely to sacrifice his entire 
substance. He would listen calmly and attentively to these 
reasonings, seem to take them into consideration, and 
after we had supposed the subject to be dismissed from 
his mind, he would recur to it, and give his reasons for the 
conviction that he ought to persevere in his efforts to es- 
tablish a college. On one occasion, this conviction was 
expressed in the words, "Destroy it not, for a blessing is 
in it!" 

In this conviction his faith never faltered. And even 
when away from "lovely Lafayette," as he was fond to call 
it, toiling in other fields, and when the prospects of the 



1 64 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

College were darkest, he held on to the hope — the belief, 
rather — that the College would surmount her difficulties, 
and, by God's good hand, rise above the opposition of 
enemies and the apathy and folly of false friends, and prove 
a great blessing to the church, the country, and the world. 
"I cannot be persuaded," wrote he to his brother, "that 
an institution begun — as I believe it was — in faith, and 
founded in so many prayers and tears, and in which the 
Lord led me, as I think, to expend so much toil and sub- 
stance, is to prove a failure. Lovely Lafayette will yet 
flourish!" Even when the property of the College was 
advertised to be sold by the sheriff, after his resignation 
of the presidency, he never lost confidence in its ultimate 
success ; and, as the writer believes, never ceased to pray 
for its success. How much of that success was resultant 
f.om his faith, his prayers, and his singular, paternal love 
f jr the College, is only known to Him who hears the prayers 
and bottles the tears of his devoted servants. 

There was another mind and another heart engaged in 
praying, toiling, and sacrificing for the establishment of 
Lafayette College, of which it were wrong not to make 
mention in connection with the name of its founder. All 
such enterprises have a secret and unobserved as well as 
a public history. And whilst the influence and the work 
of woman in promoting them may not appear in "reports" 
and "catalogues," nor in the journals of the day, they are 
often not only very great but sometimes essential to suc- 
cess. In all his plans, toils and trials in founding the 
College, Dr. Junkin was cheered, consoled, encouraged, and 
aided by the lovely and accomplished woman who called 
him husband. Indeed, it was mainly her means that en- 
abled him to assume the pecuniary responsibilities of the 
position, and to suffer the losses incurred. Of gentle and 
unassuming yet attractive manners ; of unusually sound 
judgment ; patient, hopeful and cheerful under trials and 



MRS. J UN KIN. j6$ 

discouragements; in full sympathy with her husband's aims, 
and zealous in promoting them ; and, withal, a woman of 
strong faith in God, and of devout, prayerful habits, — she 
was indeed a helpmeet for a man engaged in such an arduous 
work. Her letters to him, during his frequent absences 
from home collecting funds for the College, disclose the 
amount of care, and even of business, that sometimes 
devolved upon her. Over their large family she presided 
with judicious efficiency in his absence; and not only so, 
but the business agents of the institution, and even the 
Professors, often resorted to her for counsel when difficul- 
ties arose. In her letters, which are models at once of 
wifely affection and considerateness, and of clearness and 
fulness of business detail, she kept him posted in regard to 
the condition of the home and the College. And whilst 
they sometimes betray the yearning of her heart for his 
presence, and regret at the necessity of separation, yet no 
murmur escapes that might sadden his heart or discourage 
him in his work; but, on the contrary, they were well 
adapted to cheer and sustain him. Accustomed in her 
girlhood to the ease and the elegant comforts of a wealthy 
home, she conformed to the cares and sacrifices incident to 
her position with a Christian cheerfulness worthy of all 
praise and of imitation. 

A few extracts from these letters may disclose at once 
the perplexities and cares incident to such an enterprise as 
her husband was prosecuting, and the spirit with which 
both he and she encountered them : 

" Mount Lafayette, May 8th, 1835. 

"My dear Husband, — You have by this time, I hope, 
reached Pittsburg in safety, and perhaps are engaged just 
now in writing to tell me so. I feel a good deal anxious 
to hear from you, especially to know if you are better in 
health. . . . We are getting along as well as we can 
without you, but miss you very much. Several new stu- 



1 66 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

dents have come, but few of the old ones have yet arrived. 
Mr. Kuhn (Professor of Languages) says about eighty are 
now here. The letters which come, requesting information, 
I give to him to answer. . . . The steaming apparatus 
(for culinary and laundry purposes) does not answer very 
well. It requires great heat to make it boil, and Mr. G. 
(the business superintendent) thinks there is too large a 
body of water, and too little surface on top, to generate 
steam enough. I believe he is trying his best to make it 
work. ' ' 

" May 18th. 

" . . . College affairs move on very well. The 
students have been very orderly. . . . They have got 
the steam fixtures to work finely, and the cook is in good 
spirits, and is sorry I had told you it did not do well, fear- 
ing it would vex you. Mr. Godown (steward) told me to 
tell you that he is trying to divide the money in hand as 
well as he can, to meet demands on the college expenses. 
He went to Mr. Porter to try and get some of the 
State money, but he told him it could not be had till Mr. 
McKeen returned. ... I endeavor to keep my mind 
easy, and rest all my burdens upon the Lord. But ah ! I 
find my faith weak ; unbelieving fears will intrude and dis- 
turb my peace. I feel very sensibly the want of that dear 
bosom on which I can lean and pour out all my joys and 
sorrows ; but I know it is wrong to trust to any earthly 
support. ' Oh for a closer walk with God,' a more implicit 
confidence in that Frie?id who sticketh closer than a 
brother !" 

The above were written to him whilst in attendance upon 
the Pittsburg Convention and the General Assembly, of 
which he was that year a member. After the Assembly 
adjourned, he returned home, but soon resumed his toils in 
visiting different sections to collect funds for the college. 
The following extracts are from letters addressed to him 
whilst thus engaged : 

" Mount Lafayette, Nov. 14th, 1835. 

" My dear Husband, — . . . You appear to be in 
pretty good heart about the college. I do sincerely pray 



MRS. JUNKIN. j6 7 

that the Lord may prosper you, and that your labor may 
not be in vain. You have spent many anxious hours about 
it, and endured much fatigue; but if you can by it pro- 
mote the Redeemer's kingdom, I know you will feel amply 
rewarded. From the way things went in Synod, I should 
think the present a favorable time for your application. 
We have not heard whether Mr. B. submits to his sentence. 
. As far as I know, things go on very smoothly 
in the college. The students are generally much pleased 
with the change in the faculty. . . . There is a very 
respectable body of students here now. They conduct 
themselves with a great deal of propriety. They are nearly 
all anxious to work, and Mr. G. says he finds much diffi- 
culty in getting sufficient work for those who want to work 
in the shops. . . . S., M., J., Jos., and E. have walked 
over to Uncle D.'s to-day; G., E., and W. are playing up 
by the shops ; little J. is asleep in the cradle beside me ; 
we have all enjoyed good health since you left us. Oh that 
we were duly thankful ! Do not preach too much, espe- 
cially at night. When will you be home ? We do indeed 
miss you very much. I believe all try to do as well as they 
can ; but still the head is wanting, and you will probably 
find, on your return, that many things have not been at- 
tended to as you wished. . . . Good-by, my dear 
husband. May the Lord bless and prosper you, and restore 
you to us soon in health and peace. 

"Your affectionate 

"Julia." 

" Mount Lafayette, Dec. 21st, 1835. 

" My dear Husband, — I have had some doubts whether 
it is worth while to write to you, thinking that you will 
perhaps be home in a few days. 1st. Because, in a letter 
received from Mr. Breckenridge, since you left us, he says 
this is not a good time for you to go to Baltimore ; and — 
2d. If it was not a good time to beg there when he wrote, 
it will certainly be worse now, as the sufferers by the 
dreadful fire in N. Y. will require all the funds the charita- 
ble have to spare. We have not heard any of the particulars 
yet, but expect we will by this evening's mail. The Ob- 
server has not come, and probably was not printed. A 
short notice in the last Philadelphia paper mentioned that 



1 68 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

seven entire blocks were destroyed, in one of which was 
the Middle Dutch Church. Dr. Knox of course must be 
burned out. It is an awful dispensation ! How quickly 
can He who rules the raging elements send them to lay low 
the pride of man ! Many who were rolling in affluence 
when you were in N. Y., will find a sad change now. . . 
I am kept pretty busy, as, in addition to my other cares, I 

have undertaken to teach E and Win. I found if I 

did not do it they would run wild altogether, for Mr. K. 
has not time to attend to them." 

Similar extracts might be multiplied, many of them going 
even more into the detail of the perplexing cares that, in 
his absence, devolved upon her, and upon the agents he 
had left in charge of the various departments of the institu- 
tion, but all exhibiting the same spirit of devotion to a work 
which she considered to be promotive of her Redeemer's 
kingdom. But it seems not desirable to present more than 
will enable the reader to form an estimate of the toils and 
trials to which this noble Christian woman, in common with 
her husband, submitted, for Christ's sake, in laying the 
foundations of a seat of learning that has proved, and is 
likely still further to prove, a great blessing to the church, 
the country, and the world. Only one more extract from 
these letters shall be made, showing that a suggestion of 
hers led to the adoption of a different plan of operations, 
which enabled the President to bestow more attention upon 
the home interests of the College : 

"The evening we received your letter from Baltimore 
we had some expectation of seeing yourself, and you may 
know it was a dai?iper to hear that you were about starting 
to go through the New Castle Presbytery. I really fear 
you will have your labor for your pains. If you were getting 
any funds worth the while, I would submit more contentedly 
to your absence from home, which I do feel very much ; 
but I try to bear it as well as I can, knowing that I have 
still many mercies of which I am unworthy. It is certainly 
a disadvantage to the college for you to be so much away, 



NEW AGENCY. 



169 



not to speak of your own family ; and I think an agent 
might be procured who would be as good a beggar as you. 
What think you of Benjamin Tyler?* There is a possi- 
bility, perhaps a probability, that he would accept. He is a 
warm friend to you and to the college ; he says there is no 
institution in the land in which he feels so much interest ; 
he is a great advocate of manual labor, has a good address, 
and is personally acquainted with the management of affairs 
in the institution. He is at present at Princeton, and I 
think if you would write to him, and urge him a little, he 
would undertake it." 

This suggestion was adopted. Mr. Tyler consented, and 
after Dr. Junkin had labored a few months longer in the 
work of collecting, he devolved it cheerfully upon Mr. 
Tyler. After he had served for a time with varying suc- 
cess, he accepted a pastoral charge, and retired from the 
agency. Another was appointed, but his efforts accom- 
plished but little, and the time drew on when Dr. Junkin 
was to be separated for a season from the institution, and 
its struggles were to be continued under the administration 
of other men. 

It was deemed best to give in a consecutive statement an 
account of Dr. Junkin' s direct labors in founding Lafa- 
yette College, so as to convey some faint conception of 
their nature and amount. But during these years of toil 
in this enterprise, other and very important events in his 
history occurred, and other labors, arduous and self-deny- 
ing, yet not so directly connected with the College, were 
performed. To record these it will be necessary to go 
back to the period of his advent to Easton, and bring up 
the narrative of these contemporaneous events and labors. 
This will be done in the chapters next ensuing. 



* A former student of Lafayette, just then licensed ; afterwards a minister 
at Deerfield, N. J. 

15 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Dr. Junkin as a Peace-Maker — Dr. Elliott's Testimony — Joins the Presby- 
tery of Newton — Labors in the Gospel — Sermon on Transmission of 
Piety from Parent to Child — New Village — Degree of D.D. Conferred — 
Success as President, and its Causes — Heart-Sympathy — Death in the 
Household. 

FOR a time after his removal to Easton, Dr. Junkin 
continued to be a member of the Presbytery of Phil- 
adelphia, and was its Moderator for a season. About the 
time of his removal the difficulties in the old Second Church 
of that city, which eventually resulted in the division of 
it and the formation of the Central Church, were at their 
height. The Presbytery itself was much divided in opinion, 
most of the members sympathizing with the one party or 
the other so strongly as to lose their influence with the op- 
posite party. Mr. Junkin was almost the only member in 
whose impartiality both parties retained such confidence 
as pointed him out as a mediator, and he was appealed to 
to act in this capacity, and made several journeys to the city, 
and was at much toil and pains to effect an adjustment of 
these troubles. And, what is very unusual in the history 
of mere human mediators, he retained the affection and 
confidence of all concerned after the troubles were ended. 
This incident is mentioned as illustrative of a trait in Dr. 
Junkin's character, which was a marked and prominent 
one, but in which he has by some been supposed to be de- 
ficient, — capability to be a wise and impartial peace-maker. 
The unflinching firmness which he always exhibited in de- 
fence of what he deemed important truth, has left the im- 
pression upon many minds that he was a man of war rather 
than a man of peace. But those who knew him best di^ 
( 17°) 



DR. JUNKIN A PEACE-MAKER. j>ji 

not so estimate his character. They knew him to be gentle 
as a woman, and as guileless as Nathanael. And his life was 
gemmed all along with those quiet and wisely-performed 
acts of charity which win the beatitude of the peace- 
maker. One of his distinguished contemporaries, the ven- 
erable Dr. David Elliott, in a letter to the writer, says : 

"Of his disposition to remove offences, and to promote 
harmony among brethren, I have had some evidence. In 
a case of offence, in which the party offended was about to 
seek redress for the supposed injury, Dr. Junkin, having 
come to the knowledge of it, and fearing that the offended 
party might be too much excited to manage the .matter suc- 
cessfully, volunteered to mediate in the case. This was 
accepted, and he conducted the matter with so much can- 
dor and good temper that the offence, which arose from a 
misapprehension of facts, was removed, and the parties 
were ever afterwards good friends. Of this fact I had per- 
sonal knowledge, and I mention it as illustrative of the 
doctor's disposition, and also to show how easily supposed 
offences may be removed by the kind offices of a Christian 
friend, and the exercise of Christian temper by the parties." 

Dr. Junkin became a member of the Presbytery of New- 
ton, which at that time embraced the churches of Easton 
and vicinity, in April, 1833. He had been Moderator of 
the Synod of Philadelphia for the year 1831-32, and had 
opened its sessions at Lewistown, October 25, 1832, with a 
sermon upon II. Tim. i. 13. His change of Presbyterial 
relation brought him to be a member of the Synod of New 
Jersey, in connection with which he continued so long as 
he was President of Lafayette College. 

His intellectual power, great experience and skill as a 
Presbyter, and his devout and earnest zeal for everything 
that promised to promote the good of the church and the 
glory of her Head, were soon recognized by his brethren 
in his new relations, and they early and cordially accorded 
him that influence in their counsels for which such endow- 



j -j 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

ments fitted him. Both pastors and the people of the con- 
gregations sought and welcomed his labors; and, although 
he was so devoted to the great work of education, he loved 
to preach the gospel, and, in fact, his pulpit labors were 
quite as abundant as those of any of the pastors. He early in- 
augurated regular Sabbath services in Brainerd Hall, the prin- 
cipal assembly-room of the college ; and he regularly, when 
at home, conducted a Bible-class composed of the students. 
Not content with these arduous labors, he often preached 
for the pastors of Easton and of the surrounding country ; 
whilst in his frequent absences upon collecting tours, he 
never spent a silent Sabbath. His register of preaching 
shows that he always preached once, and oftener twice and 
thrice, upon the Lord's day, and, very often, during the 
week. 

On the 6th of September, 1833, he preached in Hack- 
ettstown, New Jersey, a sermon founded upon Gen. xviii. 
19. It was a time of special spiritual interest, and he was 
assisting the Rev. Dr. Joseph Campbell in a series of meet- 
ings, during which he preached four discourses. The dis- 
course mentioned was the last of the four, and made such 
an impression that the pastor and people obtained a copy 
of it, which was published. It was a remarkable sermon, 
in which the preacher took high ground in regard to God's 
faithfulness to his covenant and to his covenant people,' and 
in regard to the efficacy of parental training. He aimed to 
prove, that where heads of families are faithful in a Scrip- 
tural way in "commanding their household after them," 
the members of the household "shall keep the way of the 
Lord," and that the Lord will invariably " fulfil all that he 
hath spoken." He maintained, that with the stipulations 
of the well-ordered covenant before them, parents can, by 
God's grace, more surely transmit their piety to their off- 
spring than their worldly estate ; that, under God, the 
transmission from parent to child of the incorruptible 



DOCTORATE CONFERRED. 



173 



inheritance may be more certainly effected than that of 
worldly goods. 

In maintaining this doctrine he fully acknowledged God's 
sovereignty in dispensing grace, and man's utter depend- 
ence upon that grace, but insisted that a faithful God had 
bound himself by promise that, when the means are faith- 
fully used by believing parents, the blessing will follow 
with as unvarying certainty as effect follows cause in any 
department of the divine administration. He held that 
cause and effect are as indissolubly connected in the field 
of grace as in the field of nature; that, by a divine con- 
stitution, the family is made the agency for raising up not 
a natural seed only, but also a holy seed ; and that where 
the conditions and means thereunto are faithfully provided, 
the grace of God stands pledged to secure the blessed 
result. And he was of opinion that, in cases where that 
result was not realized, the failure was in man, not in a 
covenant-keeping God. He urged that no other view of 
this subject can furnish adequate encouragement to parental 
faithfulness. Whatever may be thought of the doctrine, 
by those who hold loose opinions in regard to the cove- 
nant of grace, it received remarkable illustration in the 
households of his father and himself. He was one of 
fourteen children, all of whom, except four who died in 
infancy, maintained a reputable profession of godliness ; 
and all of his own children, nine in number, excepting one 
who died in early infancy, were hopefully pious. 

In January, 1834, Dr. J., at the request of some of the 
inhabitants, commenced preaching in a house of worship 
near New Village, N. J., about six miles from the College. 
He gave a series of lectures upon the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
which attracted large congregations, and accomplished much 
good. 

In the autumn of 1833, Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, 
conferred upon Mr. Junkin the honorary degree of Doctor 



I7 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUKKIN. 

in Divinity. At that period these distinctions did not 
come in periodical showers, as they have since ; and as the 
recipient in this case was not in a position to confer any 
favor upon the institution that thus honored him, it may 
be fairly assumed to have been a disinterested tribute to 
his merit. 

As President of the College, Dr. Junkin was the father 
and pastor of the students. He often visited them in their 
rooms, conversed with them about their spiritual interests, 
and prayed with and for them. When any of them were 
sick, he showed a father's solicitude and care. And in the 
few cases of death that occurred during his presidency, 
all the deep feelings of his warm heart were stirred. 

This deep affection for his pupils was one of the secrets 
of Dr. J.'s great power in governing young men in col- 
lege. And it was all the more powerful in its influence by 
the fact that it was undemonstrative. His pupils found out 
that Dr. Junkin had heart, as well as head, — not from his 
professions of affection for them, for he never made any, 
but from the occasional and irrepressible outgushings of 
tenderness in his intercourse with them, and in the dis- 
charge of his duties as head of the College. Heart is an 
indispensable element of qualification of a college presi- 
dent, especially among American youth. But it must be 
genuine, natural, unaffected heart. If they discover that 
the se?nblance of affection is put on, and that it is per- 
functory and conventional, they will be chilled and dis- 
gusted, whilst genuine affection flashing forth unbidden, 
even from beneath a stern and undemonstrative exterior, 
wins its way directly to their hearts. 

We have mentioned that the new college edifice was 
occupied on the ist of April, 1834. But a fortnight pre- 
vious to this, viz., on the 15th of March, a severe domestic 
infliction was added to the other pressing cares of the Presi- 
dent. Death for the first time invaded his household. 



DEATH IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 



J 75 



A little baby-boy, of peculiar beauty and promise, was sud- 
denly snatched from the fond parental embrace. The event 
awoke a measure of intense sympathy in the community, 
quite unusual in case of the death of one so young ; and 
this fact won for the kind people of Easton a deeper place 
in the hearts of the stricken parents. But whilst they deeply 
mourned the loss of their beloved (Heb., David), every 
one was impressed with the singularly triumphing faith 
with which they followed him to glory. Never has the 
writer witnessed, in the afflicted, a faith so realizing and 
assured. 

This sorrow seems to have been designed to fit Dr. 
Junkin for toils and trials soon thereafter to be encoun- 
tered. The mellowing effect of it was noticeable in his 
piety. The salvation of infants was ever after a more fre- 
quent theme of his conversation and of his preaching, and 
it led him to broader and deeper discoveries of the work 
of Christ as the great Shepherd who redeems the flock and 
" feeds it, and gathereth the lambs with his arm, and car- 
rieth them in his bosom." 

Thus have we brought our sketch of the life of Dr. Junkin 
down to the period at which he became identified with the 
great doctrinal and ecclesiastical struggle which resulted 
in the division of the Presbyterian Church. Some inci- 
dents of a later date have been anticipated, because they 
grouped readily with other incidents that illustrated the 
character and disposition of the man, and because they 
were not of a character demanding chronological mention. 
We now come to the very delicate and difficult task of 
narrating the part he bore in the ecclesiastical history of 
his times. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

History of Opinion Important — Delicacy of the Writer's Task — History 
of the Disruption of 1838 — Plan of Union — Its Objects and Results — New 
England Men and Measures — Opposition to Workings of the Plan of 
Union begun in 1820 — Continued till 1831 — Party Lines drawn — The 
Church always a Missionary Society — Rise of the Board of Missions — 
Education Efforts — American Education and Home Missionary Socie- 
ties — Programme of Innovation — Proofs — Results in both Schools. 

THE history of men would be incomplete without the 
history of opinion. The facts which they believe and 
the opinions which they maintain give character to men, 
shape their conduct, and impart vivacity to their history. 
Indeed, a history that would ignore the principles of men, 
would be no history at all, for principles impart impulse to 
the actions of men. Who could write a life of Paul the 
Apostle in which the doctrine of justification by faith and 
its cognate opinions should be ignored ? Who would read 
a life of Luther, or Calvin, or Zwingle in which no state- 
ment is made of the great principles of the Protestant 
Reformation ? Who would deem a biography of Hampden, 
or Sidney, or Washington complete and satisfactory which 
made no mention of their opinions and of the principles of 
regulated liberty and the rights of man? Such narrative 
would be utterly destitute of life and interest, and would, 
indeed, lack the essential element of truth, for no incident, 
in the history of a man or of society, can be truthfully stated 
unless the causes from which it resulted are also given. 
Men act under the influence of opinion, and from motives 
furnished by their real belief; and without a knowledge 
of these, the events of history would be like boulders on 
the strand, dead facts, without connection, without ascer- 
( 176 ) 



HISTORY OF OPINION. 



11 



tained causes, and without practical value. Opinion, 
thought, principles, furnish the most vital and enduring 
staple of history. Men are born, live, die and pass away; 
generation succeeds generation, as wave follows wave on 
the bosom of the deep; but principles, if right and true, 
endure. Opinions survive the men who maintained them. 
The martyr dies, but his principles live and furnish the 
animating impulse of other struggles and the soul of other 
histories. Truth is eternal as its source. As the blood- 
circulation to the bodily life of man, so is opinion to the 
vitality of history. 

And yet the history of opinion is difficult to write, espe- 
cially whilst the conflict of opinion still goes on, or whilst 
the smoke and debris of the battle have scarcely disap- 
peared from the field of strife. Men are so apt to misap- 
prehend the opinions of opponents, to use terminology in 
such diverse senses, and to so understand an opponent as 
to intensify his error, that more than usual caution, candor 
and charity are demanded of those who write the narrative 
of controversy. 

These remarks apply to all classes of opinion, whether 
relating to physics or metaphysics, to political or social 
philosophy, or to morals. And they apply with especial 
force to the field of theological investigation. 

There are seasons, too, in which it is especially difficult 
so to write the history of systems of opinion as to make 
it satisfactory, even if fairly and truly written. There 
are times in which men are impatient of allusions to a 
recent past, the history of which may involve matters not 
pleasant to remember, and the reminiscences of which, 
they may fear, will jeopard the programme of the imme- 
diate future. 

Considerations of this kind have pressed, with a weight 
almost appalling, upon the mind of the writer of these 
pages. He had begun the work before the recent union 



l 7 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

between the two branches of the Presbyterian Church was 
certain of being accomplished ; and since its happy and 
wonderful consummation, he has, at times, been ready to 
abandon the task, in view of the peculiar delicacy and 
difficulty of writing that history of opinion, without which, 
a biography of Dr. Junkin would be not only incomplete, 
but unfair and injurious to its beloved subject. The fear 
has arisen that such a narrative might seem like the open- 
ing of wounds so recently and so happily healed ; and that, 
in recording truth, the writer might appear to wound sweet 
charity. But he has been encouraged to persevere in his 
work by such considerations as the following : 

i. God is in history, and, when truly written, it is a 
record of His providence. 

2. The history of the Presbyterian Church, for the last 
forty years, is as important as that of any other period. 
It cannot be ignored or left out : somebody will write it. 

3. Some have undertaken to write it, and that at a period 
much earlier than the present. Books of biography and 
history have been written, and that, too, before the dust of 
recent conflicts had been swept away by the zephyrs of 
returning peace. And it is here confessed, that in these 
books, on both sides, there is found a measure of candor 
and fairness scarcely to be expected from writers occupy- 
ing a party stand-point ; and 

4. The present writer hopes, by God's grace, to exercise 
at least an equal degree of candor and kindness, and, 
whilst faithful to the truth of history, and to the memory 
of the departed, to do no violence to the law of charity. 
Nor does he despair of so performing his task as to con- 
tribute to the more perfect healing of old wounds, and the 
closer union, in the truth, of that great church to which he 
has given his warmest affections, and in whose unity he 
rejoices. His task has been rendered less embarrassing 
by the fact, conceded on all hands, that the chief causes 



PLAN OF UNION. 



179 



of the division had disappeared before the reunion, and are 
now entirely eliminated. To give a compact and fair his- 
tory of the various causes that led to the disruption shall 
now be attempted. 

The opening of the nineteenth century found our coun- 
try rapidly extending her population westward, and the 
evangelical churches making efforts to establish the institu- 
tions of religion among the sparse populations of the new 
settlements. Many of those settlements were composed 
partly of the Calvinistic denominations, — Presbyterians 
and Congregationalists. Agreeing in the main in regard 
to doctrine and worship, these denominations of Christians 
differed only in the matter of church government and dis- 
cipline ; the former maintaining a representative republican 
form of government, the latter a pure democracy, in which 
all the members of the church vote in cases of discipline. 
Western New York, and the "Western Reserve" in Ohio, 
were being rapidly settled with people of both denomina- 
tions; and it sometimes happened that neither were sepa- 
rately able to support Christian ordinances, whilst, by 
uniting, they might do it. The Western (or Connecticut) 
Reserve, in the northeastern portion of Ohio, was chiefly 
settled by people from Connecticut, with an admixture from 
other States, some of whom were Presbyterians. 

The state of things here described led to the adoption, 
by the General Assembly and by the Association of Con- 
necticut, of an arrangement which has become celebrated 
in our church history as " The Plan of Union." 

The proposal that led to this measure came from the 
General Association of Connecticut, and was laid before 
the Assembly of 1801 by a committee appointed by the 
Association. The object avowed in this communication 
was, " to prevent alienation, to promote harmony, and to 
establish, as far as possible, a uniform system of church 
government between those inhabitants of the new settle- 



180 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

ments who are attached to the Presbyterian form of church 
government, and those who are attached to the Congrega- 
tional form." 

The proposal was referred to a committee, which re- 
ported a Plan, which was adopted by both the bodies. It 
contained four sections. The first enjoined upon the mis- 
sionaries " to promote mutual forbearance and a spirit of 
accommodation, between those inhabitants of the new set- 
tlements" who adhered severally to one or the other form 
of government. The second provided, that " if any church 
in the new settlements, of the Congregational order, shall 
settle a minister of the Presbyterian order, that church 
may, if they choose, conduct their discipline according to 
Congregational principles, settling their difficulties among 
themselves, or by a council mutually agreed upon for that 
purpose. But if any difficulty shall exist between the 
minister and the church, or any member of it, it shall be 
referred to the Presbytery to which the minister shall be- 
long, provided both parties agree to it, otherwise by a 
council, one-half Congregationalists and the other Presby- 
terians, mutually agreed upon by the parties." The third 
made precisely similar provisions, mutatis mutandis, in case 
a Presbyterian church settled a Congregational minister. 
The fourth provided, " that if any congregation consist 
partly of those who hold the Congregational form of dis- 
cipline, and partly of those who hold the Presbyterian 
form, we recommend to both parties that this be no obstruc- 
tion to uniting in one church and settling a minister, and 
that, in this case, the church choose a standing committee 
from the communicants of said church, whose business it 
shall be to call to account every member of the church who 
shall conduct himself inconsistently with the laws of Chris- 
tianity, and to give judgment on such conduct. That 
if the person condemned shall be a Presbyterian, he shall 
have liberty to appeal to the Presbytery; if he be a Con- 



RESULTS OF THE PLAN OF UNION. i&i 

gregationalist, he shall have liberty to appeal to the body 
of the male communicants of the church. In the former 
case, the determination of the Presbytery shall be final, 
unless the church shall consent to a further appeal to the 
Synod or the General Assembly ; and, in the latter case, 
if the party condemned shall wish for a trial by a mutual 
council, the case shall be referred to such a council. And 
provided the said standing committee of any church shall 
depute one of themselves to attend the Presbytery, he may 
have the same right to sit and act in the Presbytery as a 
ruling elder of the Presbyterian Church." This plan was 
adopted next year (1802) by the Association of Connec- 
ticut. It led to the adoption of plans of fraternal inter- 
course by the Presbytery and Synod of Albany, and the 
Congregational bodies occupying the same or adjacent 
territory; and endured much longer, and was extended 
much more widely, than seems to have been contemplated 
by the stipulating bodies on either side. 

Whilst there is no doubt that the purest and noblest 
Christian impulses led to the adoption of this famous Plan 
of Union, and whilst no doubt great benefits did arise out 
of it in the new settlements, it is also true that it was ex- 
tended far beyond the conception of its framers, used for 
purposes never contemplated by them, and that it brought 
into existence a large number of churches of hybrid con- 
stitution and growth, which, in the end, marred the peace 
of both denominations, and prevented the edification of 
these churches themselves. 

Other incidental evils, by no means confined to "the 
new settlements," grew out of this abnormal system, and 
rapidly extended over the whole Church, doing injury to 
both denominations. It arrested the progress of strict 
Congregationalism almost entirely ; and it produced a 
fungous growth upon the Presbyterian body inconsistent 
with its health and efficiency. It cannot be denied that 
16 



1 82 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUXKIX. 

pure Congregationalism was the greater loser by this scheme ; 
whilst the gain of the Presbyterian Church was an abnor- 
mal and unhealthy one. 

As early as 1820, the attention of the General Assembly 
was drawn to the abnormal working of this system by the 
claim of a Mr. Lathrop, a Congregationalist and a Com- 
mitteeman, to sit as a Commissioner in the General Assem- 
bly. His right was resisted, but conceded. (See Minutes, 
pp. 721, 722, 724.) Again, in the first General Assembly 
in which Mr. Junkin sat (1826), a similar case occurred, 
and forty-two members protested. (Minutes, 1826, pp. 8, 
23, 28.) Again, in 1831, in the case of Clement Tuttle, 
a committeeman from Grand River Presbytery. He was 
admitted, and a protest against it entered. But at the 
same session a resolution was passed to the effect, that the 
appointment of committeemen as commissioners to the 
Assembly was "inexpedient and of questionable constitu- 
tionality, and therefore ought not in future to be made." 
(Minutes, pp. 158, 185, 190.) Against this act of the 
Assembly those members, who about this time began to be 
called the "New School," protested. (192.) 

Next year the same Presbytery sent up two "committee- 
men" as commissioners. Their case was referred to the 
committee on elections, who reported that these com- 
missions had been withdrawn. (Minutes, 1832, pp. 314, 

3150 

Concomitant with the governmental difficulties arising 
out of the "Plan of Union," were others of a more serious 
character, affecting the doctrinal purity of the churches. 
New England had a surplus of preachers, as well as of other 
educated men, who naturally sought employment in other 
States, particularly in the West. The system of Congrega- 
tionalism was not so effective in securing careful examina- 
tion of candidates for the holy office as was the system of 
Presbytery. For many years the theology of New England, 



MODIFICATIONS OF DOCTRINE. 



183 



once thoroughly Calvinistic, had in certain quarters, and 
in certain schools, been undergoing a gradual, almost im- 
perceptible, but still real change in the direction of greater 
laxity of opinion. The Socinian or Unitarian element had 
crept in ; and although it was learnedly and ably resisted 
by many of the best New England minds, it had made 
alarming progress. Harvard College, founded by the zeal, 
the prayers and the gifts of godly and orthodox worship- 
pers of the Son of God, had passed under the control of 
those who denied his supreme Divinity. Many Congrega- 
tional churches, once orthodox, had gone over to the 
Unitarians. Others had become divided, some of the 
members adhering to the orthodox views, and others em- 
bracing the Christ-dishonoring error. And in the progress 
of the doctrinal conflict, even those who adhered to ortho- 
doxy were led, in some cases, by stress of circumstances, 
and by what they supposed to be the justifiable necessities 
of controversy, to modify, in many points, the stern old 
dogmas of the Calvinistic creed of their fathers, and pre- 
sent new views of theology, which they hoped might be 
more defensible as against the specious and popular thrusts 
of the Socinians. This was one cause of the rise of what 
has been known as the "New Theology." 

Other modifications of the doctrines of Christianity, as 
laid down in the Westminster standards, the Saybiook 
Platform and other evangelical formularies, arose from the 
fondness for speculation, and especially from a desire to 
get clear of certain objections which had always been raised 
against the Calvinistic system. These dogmas of the New 
Theology will be noted further on. This much of their 
history is here given, for the purpose of enabling the reader 
to understand the time and the mode of the rise of that 
theological controversy, in the progress of which the sub- 
ject of this narrative bore a conspicuous part. 

The Plan of Union, as we have seen, opened the way for 



1 84 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

the free ingress of New England preachers into the 
Presbyterian Church. And whilst many of them were 
sound and excellent men, not a few were more or less im- 
bued with the speculations of the New Theology. Men 
of this stamp found their way, not only into the mixed 
churches in the new settlements, but also into important 
pastoral charges in the older Presbyteries, in which the 
Plan of Union was never intended, by its framers, to oper- 
ate. That "Plan of Union" did much to make the people 
and the Presbyteries feel that the two systems were identi- 
cal ; that Congregational and Presbyterian ministers were 
so nearly the same, that the transit from one body to the 
other scarcely involved any change of opinion, and de- 
manded no examination of the men in transitu. The con- 
sequence was, that scrutiny of doctrinal views was relaxed, 
and ministers and licentiates passed from one body to the 
other without suspicion and without challenge, clean papers 
only being demanded. This state of things might seem very 
accordant with fraternal confidence and charity, and very 
fair and equal in its operations. But when it is remem- 
bered that the transits were nearly all in one direction, viz., 
from New England and the Congregational Associations 
into the bounds and the Presbyteries of the Presbyterian 
Church, it will be seen that the rule worked only one 
way, and soon threw into the latter Church a large, 
shrewd, and enterprising body of men who were Presby- 
terian not from conviction but for convenience. There were 
few new churches organized in New England ; and as their 
Colleges and Seminaries teemed with young men who 
wanted places and could not find them upon Congrega- 
tional ground, it was a very nice arrangement by which 
the surplus could flow into the Presbyterian congregations. 
Whilst the "Plan of Union" opened the way for this pro- 
cess, other agencies were called into exercise for vigorously 
helping forward the process. The American Education 



BITTER RESENTMENT. 



185 



Society and the American Home Missionary Society, both 
under control of Congregational men, constituted efficient 
agencies for this purpose ; the one providing the men, the 
other sending them forth and sustaining them. Through 
such a door, and by such agencies, were many men, who 
were brought up with Congregational prepossessions and 
in the New Theology, thrown broadcast over the Presby- 
terian Church, many of them into positions of influence. 
The greater number, it is true, were to be found in the 
State of New York, Northern Ohio, and the West ; but 
sporadic cases of such element were found in other locali- 
ties, even in the distant South. 

The fruits of an ecclesiastical system so lax and un- 
guarded, soon began to appear. Diverse opinions, both in 
doctrine and order, arose, and became more and more 
strongly marked, and, from 1820 onward to 1837, these 
conflicts of opinion increased in earnestness until they 
resulted in disruption. 

It would be impossible to write a just and complete bio- 
graphy of Dr. George Junkin without exhibiting the part 
he bore in the events which resulted in the division of the 
church ; and it will be impossible to exhibit this without 
going into a pretty full detail of the doctrinal and eccle- 
siastical conflicts that marked the period. Perhaps no man 
in the ranks of the "Old School" was the object of more 
bitter resentment, nor the subject of intenser animadver- 
sion, than was he, and none of them made such sacrifices 
of private interests, personal feeling, bodily and intellect- 
ual toil, and public consideration. No man, unless it was 
Dr. Robert J. Breckenridge, was for a time more obnoxious 
to the "New School," and to that portion of the public 
that sympathized with them. This was in part owing to 
the following facts : 1st. Dr. Junkin encountered the odium 
that is apt to attach to a public prosecutor, especially when 
the accused is a favorite with a large party. 2d. He 



lS6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

was the instrument of bringing the doctrinal questions at 
issue to a judicial decision, and of demonstrating that these 
questions affected fundamentals in the faith of the church. 
3d. Whenever great questions of doctrine or constitutional 
principles were discussed, he was among the prominent and 
effective debaters. 4th. He took less pains than most men 
do to "set himself right" with the public. His habitual 
forgetfulness of self when he thought truth and right were 
at stake, prevented any questions about the popularity of his 
course from arising in his mind. He was one of the men 
who would rather be right than be popular; and, aiming 
to do right in the fear of God, he was not given to make 
calculations in regard to the effect it might have on his 
private interests or his personal popularity. He had 
faith in God and in the future, and was perhaps too indif- 
ferent to the transient censures of heated partisans, and 
the currents of popular opinion. Hence he was often mis- 
understood and misrepresented in regard to his motives 
and conduct, especially by those who did not personally 
know him. 

The causes of the disruption of 1838 may all be com- 
prehended under four classes, affiliated, however, in their 
operation, viz., 1. Alleged error in doctrine ; 2. Alleged 
departure from Presbyterian order ; 3. What were techni- 
cally called "New Measures ; " and 4. Diversity of opinion 
in regard to the modes of conducting the aggressive work 
of the church; one party claiming that it is the right and 
the duty of the church to conduct Missions in her own 
name, and through her own organization; the other party 
insisting that it may be done through the agency of Vol- 
untary Societies. The first class of causes will be treated 
further on ; the second class we have noticed as growing 
out of "the Plan of Union;" the third, the "New Meas- 
ures," were certain methods of conducting revival efforts, 
which had been introduced by zealous ministers and lay- 



RISE OF THE BOARD OF MISSIONS. 



S 7 



men, and which had been carried to such extremes by Mr. 
Finney, Mr. Burchard, and others, as to awaken resistance 
to them, on the part of those who dreaded excitement and 
extravagances. Dr. Nettleton and others in New England 
raised the first opposition to these "New Measures;" but 
both the measures themselves, and opposition to them, 
were soon transferred to the Presbyterian churches. Many 
sound men (doctrinally) favored them to some extent, 
under the conviction that they promoted conversions and 
a lively type of piety. As a general thing, they were op- 
posed by the "Old School" and favored by the "New;" 
and there can be no doubt that many sound men were led 
to sympathize with the New School more than they other- 
wise would have done, under the impression that there was 
more earnest Christian activity and less "dead orthodoxy" 
with the latter. Still it is true that many of the Old School 
used the "inquiry meeting," and sometimes the "anxious 
seats." But, as the subject of our memoir was never in- 
volved in any of the discussions connected with this mat- 
ter, and as it was not before the church courts, we dismiss 
it. The fourth cause needs fuller mention. 

From her earliest history in this land, the Presbyterian 
Church has been practically an education and a missionary 
organization. The Mother Presbytery (Philadelphia) passed 
a missionary order at the very first meeting, the records of 
which are preserved (1707). Indeed., one of the avowed 
objects of the formation of the Presbytery was to operate 
it as a missionary society. This is stated in a letter, writ- 
ten in 1709, to Sir Edmund Harrison. [See letter in 
Records of Presbyterian Church, page 16.] And all down 
through the history of the church, the idea was practically 
recognized, that the church was a missionary society per se, 
and that evangelizing work was her mission. Into the very 
woof of her constitution and history this idea was woven, 
and the attempt to eliminate it, and to deprive the church 



1 88 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUXKIX. 

of direct control over her own work, did more to arouse 
the "Old School," and consolidate their strength, than 
even the alleged ingress of doctrinal error. 

From the earliest years of her history in this land, at the 
close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth 
century, her ministers and her Presbyteries gave attention 
to educating at home, or procuring from abroad, ministers 
to supply the increasing destitutions, so that the cause of 
education and of home missions was coeval with the found- 
ing of our denomination. The proposal to take this work 
out of the hands of the church herself and to consign it to 
the agency of Voluntary Societies, not amenable to the 
church courts, and beyond the control of her spiritual 
authorities, seemed like surrendering the Keys of the King- 
dom, and it startled those who clung to the ancient usages 
of the church, and did more to unite them in opposition 
to the alleged innovations than any other one cause. And 
as this proposal seemed to be a part of an extended pro- 
gramme by which, as they feared, errors in doctrine and 
changes in ecclesiastical government were being widely and 
rapidly propagated, a firm resistance to that scheme was 
aroused. 

On the other hand, the authors and advocates of this 
scheme, deeming, no doubt, that the best interests of re- 
ligion would be promoted by the proposed innovations, 
pressed them with ardor, vigor, and adroitness. 

That the church courts always claimed to be missionary 
organizations is fully avouched by the records. The first 
Presbytery, as we have seen, assumed and acted upon the 
claim. The Synod did the same. And when the General 
Assembly was organized, the right and the duty of the 
church courts to prosecute and control evangelical work 
was distinctly asserted in the XVIII. chapter of the Form 
of Government. That chapter gives to each Presbytery 
the right to supervise missions within its own bounds; re- 



ECCLESIASTICAL CONTROL. 189 

quires of every missionary coming within its bounds to 
"be ready to produce his credentials to the Presbytery 
through which he may pass;" and declares that "the 
General Assembly may, of their own knowledge, send mis- 
sions to any part to plant churches, or to supply vacancies, ' ' 
etc. And it was a conceded doctrine, that the Assembly 
had supreme control over the whole subject of missions ; 
for, so early as 1791, when, on account of their distance 
and the peculiar condition of the currency in the Southern 
States, the Synod of the Carolinas wished to collect and 
disburse their own missionary funds, they applied to the 
General Assembly, and permission was formally granted. 
It was "Resolved that the Synod of the Carolinas be 
allowed to manage the matter of sending missionaries to 
destitute places, . . . provided that the Synod shall 
send annually to the General Assembly a particular account 
of their proceedings on the above subject, and a regular 
statement of the money that may be collected and dis- 
bursed." [Minutes of 1791, p. 38.] 

With such provision in the written constitution of the 
church, and with such a history before them, it is not mat- 
ter of surprise that the " Old School" should be unwilling, 
that the great principle of ecclesiastical responsibility and 
control should be either ignored or denied. It was under 
the operation of ecclesiastical control and organization that 
the little germ, planted by Makemie, Simpson, Riddel, 
and their companions, had grown to be a luxuriant vine, 
overshadowing the land ; and they were unwilling to relin- 
quish a system under which such blessed results had been 
realized. The Mother Presbytery, four years after her 
organization, assumed the control of the education of a 
candidate for the ministry, David Evans. [See Records.] 
In 1 717 a "Fund for pious uses" was formed. In 1771 a 
systematic plan for educating candidates was adopted by 
the General Synod ; and the work of training and sending 



i 9 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK1X. 

forth ministers to evangelize the rapidly growing popula- 
tion was carried steadily on. 

Nor was the Foreign Missionary work neglected. In 
1751, in view of "the exigencies of the great affair of 
propagating the gospel among the heathen," a standing 
order was issued that a collection be made in each of the 
churches, once a year, for that object. The Rev. John 
Brainerd was supported as a missionary among the Indians 
of New Jersey by this fund, until his death in 1781. 

After the organization of the General Assembly, that 
body for a long time transacted missionary business whilst 
in session. But, on account of the long intervals between 
its sessions, and the growing importance of the missionary 
work, it was deemed expedient to appoint a standing Com- 
mittee on Missions, to collect and arrange information for 
the Assembly. This was done in 1802. This Committee 
was appointed from year to year ; its powers were gradu- 
ally increased, until, in 181 6, its name was changed to 
"The Board of Missions," and the whole business of 
missions committed to it, subject to the direction and con- 
trol of the Assembly, to which it was required annually to 
report. 

As early as 1805, the attention of the Assembly was en- 
gaged in efforts to increase facilities for the education of 
young men for the ministry. The Presbyteries were 
earnestly urged to increase their zeal in this work, and to 
report their transactions to the Assembly annually. These 
movements, whilst they increased the educational efforts, 
did not produce results adequate to the necessities of the 
church and country. 

In 18 1 5, a voluntary association, called the American 
Educational Society, was organized at Boston, which made 
vigorous exertions to unite all the evangelical denomina- 
tions of the country in a grand educational movement 
under its auspices. And at one time there seemed a like- 



AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY. 



191 



lihood that this society would grasp all the funds, and con- 
trol the entire work of educating men for the ministry. 
Good men in all the evangelical churches, who were not 
posted in regard to the progress of the New Theology, were 
ready to hail this movement as the harbinger of glorious 
things for Zion. Even the subject of this memoir joined 
heart and hand in furthering the interests of this society, 
in the region in which his first pastorate was exercised. 
But leading minds in the Presbyterian Church, who lived 
nearer to the centres of information and better understood 
the tendency of things, were alarmed at the idea of a 
society whose centre of operations lay beyond the bound- 
aries of the church, and over which the church had no 
control, being permitted to have the training of her future 
ministry. They saw danger in consigning this very im- 
portant part of the work of the church to irresponsible 
hands. And they were especially alarmed at the palpable 
fact, that most of the men who controlled the management 
of this society were identified with a type of theology 
different, in many important points, from that embodied 
in the standards of the church. 

And as this Education Society was chiefly under Con- 
gregational control, and as the Home Missionary Society 
was located in New York, and was also largely under the 
same sort of control, they apprehended that the one Society 
would train preachers of a particular type of Theology, 
and with loose views of church order, and the other Society, 
standing as it were at the door of entrance to the Presby- 
terian Church, would scatter them broadcast through the 
church, to the imperilling of her doctrine and order. And 
the Old School believed that this process had already 
been carried on, and that, unless arrested, it would revolu- 
tionize the church, and give permanent ascendency to the 
New Theology, and to the control of the Voluntary associa- 
tions. This result they were honest in deploring as disas- 



ig 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

troiis, for they sincerely believed that the cause of true 
religion, at home and abroad, would be injured by the 
propagation of the new views. 

We are not disposed to attribute to the great body 
of the New School party in the church a deliberate 
purpose to effect the revolution, which the other party 
dreaded. Nor do we suppose, that even a majority of 
them suspected that such a revolution was designed by their 
leaders. Indeed, it is probable that, if the scheme was 
laid for the purpose, as the Old School alleged, the plan 
was known only to the few shrewd and energetic minds 
who had somehow been placed at the head of the move- 
ment, and of the organizations by which it was to be car- 
ried out. And it is now matter of history, that many 
of these belonged to the Congregational element in the 
church, and actually withdrew from the New School body, 
after the division took place, and returned to a more con- 
genial ecclesiastical connection. 

The writer of these pages was a pastor in the city of 
Washington at the time the New School General Assembly 
met in that city in 1852. And he well remembers, that the 
chief portion of the time of the Assembly was occupied in 
an ardent discussion of some of the very questions which 
had originally divided them from the Old School in 1830- 
1837, — the questions of ecclesiastical control of education 
and missions versus the control of voluntary societies. He 
distinctly remembers, that the late venerable Dr. George 
Durheld approached him, as he sat listening to the discus- 
sions, and whispered, "You see, Dr. Junkin, that we are 
here discussing among ourselves the very questions over 
which we battled with you fifteen years ago." They dis- 
cussed them ably. The original pronounced Presbyterians 
were generally found advocating ecclesiastical control ; and 
these views gradually gained ground, until our New School 
brethren fully adopted them, and reduced them to practice 



RESULTS IN BOTH SCHOOLS. 



193 



in the organization of church Boards or Committees. The 
element that was adverse to this reform had been gradually 
sloughing off from the body; and continued to do so 
until it became, previous to the late reunion, quite a 
thoroughly homogeneous Presbyterian body. 

And with this foreign element, it cannot be doubted, 
there was carried out of that branch of the church much 
of that fondness for a novel terminology in Theology, 
which had awakened the apprehensions of the Old School, 
and which led to the agitations which resulted in disrup- 
tion. 

If this statement be historically true, — and we think no 
man thoroughly posted will deny it, — it proves two things : 
First, That there did exist serious and grave causes, doc- 
trinal and ecclesiastical, for the troubles of 1830-1837, 
causes which earnest and honest men of the Old School 
views could not conscientiously ignore; and Second, 
That these causes have been, in the progress of events, 
almost, if not wholly, removed ; so that the Reunion was 
almost as inevitable a result of the course of things, as the 
Disruption was at the time it occurred. 

17 



CHAPTER XX. 

History of Doctrinal Opinion — English Presbyterianism always Defective — 
Man of Straw — Congregatio-Presbyterianism of New England — Effect 
upon Doctrinal Opinion — New Terminology and its Probable Causes — 
American Presbyterianism of Scottish Origin — The " Adopting Act" — 
Ingress of New Theology — Hopkinsianism — Semi-Pelagianism — Taylor- 
ism— State of Parties. 

IT will not be necessary to the completeness of this 
memoir, to give a full history of the doctrinal opinions 
involved in the controversy in which Dr. Junkin bore 
a part. It is in itself a very interesting one, running 
back into the seventeenth century ; for the pedigree of 
opinion is as distinctly traceable as are the genealogies of 
men. Views of doctrine in one generation are influenced 
by those held in a preceding one ; and he has but shallow 
conceptions of the philosophy of thought who ignores this 
connection. In the troublous times succeeding the great 
Civil Revolution in England the church was tossed upon the 
billows of civil commotion, and was in a state distracted 
and unsettled. Although the Westminster Assembly had 
adopted the Confession of Faith and the Presbyterian form 
of government, and the Long Parliament had given it a 
modified sanction, yet there was never a general accept- 
ance of either in England. In some cases, those of the 
clergy who were Presbyterian in sentiment, organized into 
Presbyteries ; but such organization never became general. 
The Protector, being an Independent, threw all the weight 
of his influence against Presbyterianism ; and, upon the 
restoration of the Stuarts, the Presbyterians were objects 
of violent persecution, so that the people usually called 
Presbyterians never were fully such in the sense in which 
(!94) 



ENGLISH PRESB YTERIANISM DEFECTIVE. 



195 



that term is now understood. There never was a general 
organization of the people thus denominated ; nor did any- 
considerable number of them so adhere to the Westminster 
Symbols, as to be entitled to be called Presbyterians in the 
sense in which the Church of Scotland, or the American 
Church, is called Presbyterian. There was no such organiza- 
tion among them as could hold any minister responsible for 
departures from the Standards of Westminster. They had 
really no church authority, except such as might be volun- 
tarily yielded. Persecuted whenever they assumed publicity, 
and many of them subjected to the licentious influences 
of the reign of the second Charles, they had, by the time 
the Act of Toleration under William of Orange gave them 
respite from persecution, lost almost everything distinctive 
of Presbyterianism but the name. As a people they really 
had never fully understood the Presbyterian system, and 
had never been trained to a stalwart maintenance of its 
principles. The pressure of political circumstances, and 
the attraction of fellowship in common dangers and perse- 
cutions, had drawn them and the Independents together ; 
and the result was, in many cases, an amalgamation of the 
two systems, constituting modern Congregationalism. Of 
course, in a state of things so little favorable to the exercise 
of church authority, little restraint could be laid upon error 
in doctrine, and little or no discipline exercised for depart- 
ures from the orthodox faith. 

From this statement, which cannot be truthfully gain- 
said, two positions are deducible, — 1st. That the indis- 
criminate charges made by writers of English history 
against the Presbyterians, are made against a man of straw, 
— a body that never had either organized existence or 
organized political power ; that such allegations apply to 
persons who were in no sense true Presbyterians; and 
therefore, whether true or false, as to fact, are slanders 
upon Presbyterians ; and 2d. That it was to be expected 



196 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUXKIX. 

that colonists, coming from such a state of things in the Old 
World, would be likely to transfer it to the New. Accord- 
ingly we find that, although a majority of the colonists of 
New England were Independents, there was an admixture 
of that sort of Presbyterianism that existed in England. In 
reply to inquiries made by the Lords of Trade and Planta- 
tions concerning the colonists, and their condition and pros- 
pects, the authorities of the colony of Connecticut stated (in 
1680) that "some are strict Congregational men, others more 
large Congregational men, and some moderate Presbyte- 
rians. ' ' * And what was true of Connecticut was true also of 
Massachusetts, and to some extent of all New England. No 
wonder that, with such elements of religious society, the 
effort to combine them should result in various compromises, 
ranging from the civico-ecclesiastical platform of Cambridge 
to the semi-Presbyterian one of Saybrook. Doubtless the 
sparseness of population, and the difficulty of maintaining 
ordinances in a new country, were motives for sacrificing ex- 
treme views of church order, and originating the peculiar 
Congregatio-Presbyterianism of New England. And the 
union of the two, thus effected in the colonies, was imitated 
in the mother-country; and, under the influence of the Rev. 
Increase Mather, a union of Presbyterians, Baptists, and 
Independents was formed in London, and in other parts 
of the kingdom, in 1690, under articles entitled "Heads 
of Agreement, "f 

Of course, in such an amalgam distinctive Presbyterian- 
ism would be neutralized ; and pronounced adherence to 
accurate doctrinal statement would be relinquished. A 
zeal for union that could bring together such elements, 
would make large demands for the surrender of doctrinal 
opinions ; whilst, in the discussions necessary to effect such 

* Hinman's Antiquities of Connecticut, p. 141. 

f Bogue and Bennet, vol. i. p. 381 ; and Magnalia Americana, vol. ii. p. 
233- 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 



197 



a union, a fondness for speculation would be fostered, and 
skill therein acquired. Such a habitude theological would 
be favorable to the truth in well-balanced minds that were 
truly led by the Holy Spirit. But in minds less logical, 
and of less decided piety, the spirit of speculation was apt 
to conduct to results hurtful to sound doctrine and practi- 
cal piety. 

The reader, if he choose to examine, may find in Ma- 
ther's Magnalia Americana (vol. i. p. 266 et a/.) proof that 
a number of the very questions that agitated the church 
in 1 830-1 83 7 were discussed in the days of Increase Mather 
and Richard Baxter ; some of the orthodox New England 
divines deploring and protesting against Baxter's denial 
of the doctrine of Adam's and Christ's covenant Headship 
and representative character. And whilst, in later days, a 
new theological nomenclature has been adopted by the 
abettors of what has been termed the New Theology, yet 
most of the dogmas thereof can be found in the earlier 
disquisitions to which reference has been made. There is 
little doubt that, in many cases, the adoption of new 
terms and new niodes of statement was prompted by the 
amiable wish to render the doctrines of the Gospel less 
objectionable to the natural man, and less assailable by 
cavilers. Whilst in others, it is to be feared, dislike to 
the sterner and less palatable truths prompted the effort to 
assail them. The desire to make "the offence of the Cross 
to cease," by softening or denying such of its doctrines as 
rouse the hostility of the carnal heart, led, in many cases, 
good men to abet the New Theology ; whilst less com- 
mendable motives may have prompted others. 

The Presbyterian Church in the United States was 
founded, and, in its earlier years, replenished, by men who 
had been trained in Scotland and in Ireland, under the 
Westminster Standards, in their stricter interpretation. 
At an early period (1729) the Mother Synod passed the 
17* 



Ig 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUKKIN. 

Adopting Act, by which those Standards, with the ex- 
ception of the chapters relating to the power of the civil 
magistrate in ecclesiastical matters, were fully received as 
the Confession of Faith, Form of Government, Book of 
Discipline, and Directory for Worship of the Church in 
America ; and that Act, together with the circumstances 
of its adoption, makes it perfectly plain that the Calvinism 
of Westminster, and no modification of it, was the the- 
ology of our Church. And whilst the Calvinism of New 
England was generally as thorough as that of Westminster, 
yet departures therefrom were to be found in many indi- 
vidual cases ; and the loose ecclesiastical system, which we 
have described, did not possess power to check or eliminate 
it. At an early period, some of the new views in theology 
began to be introduced into the bounds of the Presbyterian 
Church, by the processes already described. 

The first importation that excited apprehension was 
Hopkinsianism, so called from the Rev. Samuel Hopkins, 
D.D., of Newport, R. I., who, in 1793, had published his 
"System of Doctrines." From that time forward other 
"New Views in Theology," of various shades, arose in 
New England. The great Unitarian heresy, and the semi- 
Pelagianism that led to it, had agitated and torn the 
churches of New England ; and even among divines who 
resisted that heresy, opinions, which many believed to be 
subversive of the Augustinian faith, were promulgated. 
Finally arose the school of New Haven, with Dr. Taylor 
as its leader ; and the conflict of opinion waxed warmer, 
both in New England itself, and in the Presbyterian Church. 

It will not be necessary here to give in detail the opin- 
ions that furnished the staple of these controversies. They 
will be sufficiently brought out in the history of the great 
trial, which resulted in defining with precision the doc- 
trinal positions occupied by the two Schools, into which 
the church was unhappily divided, and in which final trial 



STATE OF PARTIES. 



[99 



Dr. Junkin was the prosecutor. We shall begin that his- 
tory in the next chapter ; but, before closing this, will 
repeat what we have said in another form, that we are far 
from supposing that a majority of our New School brethren 
had adopted the alleged errors ; nor indeed that any very 
large number had adopted the more dangerous and offensive 
features of the "New Divinity." The Old School held 
that that Divinity ought not to be taught by ministers in 
the Presbyterian Church, and that ministers who held it 
ought not to come into, or to be tolerated in, the church. 
Many of the New School, who did not receive the New 
Divinity, were willing to tolerate those who did ; whilst 
others were slow to be convinced that these doctrines 
were held by those accused of them,, and others still, could 
not deem them so dangerous as to demand discipline. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Things necessary to the Vindication of the Prosecutor of Mr. Barnes — The 
First Trial of Mr. Barnes, and Events antecedent to the Second — History 
of his Case — Referred to the General Assembly — Complaints of Minority 
— Progress of the Conflict about Home Missions — Assembly of 1831 — 
How constituted— Its Acts — Opinion of a New England Delegate — Right 
to be heard denied — Mr. McCalla— Mr. Breckenridge. 

IT has already been said that no clergyman in the ranks 
of the Old School, was the object of intenser anim- 
adversion, on the part 'of opponents, than was Dr. Junkin ; 
and none of them made such sacrifices of private interests, 
personal feeling, bodily and intellectual toil, and public 
consideration. 

In order, then, to vindicate the purity of his motives 
and the unselfishness of his aims, it will not suffice to make 
mere assertions and express opinions, without adducing 
the proofs furnished by the facts of the history of that 
period. Into these, therefore, we must go with a particu- 
larity which we would gladly otherwise avoid. And yet, 
the truth of history requires that they be placed on record. 

The first troubles that arose in the church, in connection 
with the translation of the Rev. Albert Barnes from Mor- 
ristown to Philadelphia, and the first trial of that minister, 
have been briefly mentioned in a previous chapter. With 
that trial Dr. Junkin had very little to do, — nothing, in- 
deed, except what has been related. A more detailed 
account will be necessary, in order fairly to understand 
the necessity for, and the importance of, the second trial 
of that distinguished pastor and writer, in which Dr. 
Junkin was the prosecutor. 
( 200 ) 



CHARGES AGAINST MR. BARNES. 20 1 

When the First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, ex- 
tended a call to Mr. Barnes, the congregation had never 
heard him preach, and in the call the usual formulary 
" from our past experience of your ministrations among 
us" was omitted. The call was confessedly based upon 
the favorable report of a committee which had gone to 
Morristown to hear him, and upon the merits of the 
published sermon, or " The Way of Salvation," already 
mentioned.* This sermon, as some of the members of 
Presbytery alleged, contained errors in doctrine, which 
they deemed fundamental. Mr. Gillett admits that it 
"contained expressions which some of his (Mr. Barnes') 
friends regretted, "f 

When the call was presented to the Presbytery, and 
leave was asked to prosecute it, objections were made upon 
these grounds, and because but fifty out of two hundred 
and twenty votes had been given for Mr. Barnes.* Yet leave 
was granted by a small majority. At a pro re nata meet- 
ing subsequently held (June 18), for the purpose of receiv- 
ing Mr. Barnes, and, if the way should be clear, installing 
him as pastor, opposition was made to his reception on 
the grounds of doctrinal errors avowed in the above-men- 
tioned sermon. Dr. Ely moved that the motion to receive 
should be postponed, in order to give to any member of 
Presbytery an opportunity of asking Mr. Barnes for an expla- 
nation of his doctrinal views. This motion was negatived 
(20 to 18), and Mr. Barnes was received as a member. The 
Rev. Mr. Hoff then presented charges of holding erroneous 
doctrines against Mr. Barnes in bar of his installation. The 
Moderator pronounced them out of order. Dr. Ely ap- 
pealed from this decision, but the majority sustained the 
ruling of the Moderator, and Mr. Barnes was installed. 



* Min. Syn. Phila., 1831, p. 5. 

f Hist. Presbyterian Church, vol. ii. p. 460. 



202 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIX. 

Against this action of the Presbytery, the venerable Dr. 
Ashbel Green, and twelve others, complained to the Synod 
of Philadelphia ; and the decision of the Synod, made in 
October, 1831, has been recorded in a previous chapter. 
The Synod censured the Presbytery, and directed them to 
take up and issue the case of Mr. Barnes, and adjudicate it 
fairly. Mention has been also made of the effort of the 
majority of Presbytery to press the case through in the ab- 
sence of most of the Old School members, at a meeting 
held some twenty-five hours after the adjournment of 
Synod. That effort was followed by a series of acts which, 
whether justly or not, the Old School deemed dilatory, 
evasive, and calculated to defeat the ends of discipline. 
In these discussions, the Old School members claimed that 
Presbytery had a right to decide upon the orthodoxy of 
Mr. Barnes' sermon, apart from formal judicial process. 
The New School members insisted that a judicial process 
against the author was necessary before this could be right- 
fully done. Three days were consumed in the discussions ; 
and, as the opposers of the New Theology were now in the 
majority in the Presbytery, they were about to proceed to 
examine the sermon, with a view to judge of its conformity 
or non-conformity to the Bible and the Standards, when the 
minority entered a protest, declaring the proposed course 
unconstitutional, and saying that, if persisted in, "the 
undersigned must withdraw from all participation in such 
proceedings, and complain to the next General Assembly." 
Notwithstanding this threat to withdraw, the signers of the 
protest continued to exercise freely the right to speak and 
vote on all questions of order, and to embarrass the pro- 
ceedings. And they asked and obtained from Presbytery 
the right to dissent, protest, and complain against the acts 
of Presbytery, a thing which, without permission, such 
recusants could not lawfully have done. 

When the examination of the sermon was beginning, Mr.- 



COMPLAINT TO GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



203 



Barnes asked whether he had a right to appeal to the As- 
sembly, and thus arrest proceedings. Being answered that 
such appeal would not be orderly, he presented a paper, 
acknowledging the authorship of the sermon, and offering 
himself for trial. This offer the Presbytery declined to 
receive, for reasons stated in their minutes. Mr. Barnes then 
asked leave of absence. He said he felt confident that he 
could so explain his sermon as to satisfy the Presbytery that 
it was in harmony with the Confession of Faith ; but, after 
consultation with his friends, he had determined not to do 
it then. Dr. Green most earnestly besought him, after leave 
of absence had been voted, to remain, and give the expla- 
nations which he said he was able to do, and thus promote 
the peace of the church. This he did not do. 

The Presbytery then proceeded to examine the sermon, 
and, after a careful discussion and analysis of it, a paper, 
presented by Dr. Green, was read by paragraphs, amended, 
and adopted. In this paper it was affirmed that the sermon 
contained dangerous doctrinal errors, especially upon the 
points of original sin, the atonement, and justification. 

It was then moved "That Dr. Green, Mr. McCalla, and 
Mr. Latta be a committee to wait on Mr. Barnes to com- 
municate to him the result of the deliberations of Presby- 
tery in the examination of his sermon, and to converse 
with him freely and affectionately on the points excepted 
to in that sermon, in the hope and expectation that the 
interview will result in removing or diminishing the diffi- 
culties that have arisen in his case, and that they report 
the next meeting of Presbytery." 

The minority opposed this motion as involving a direct 
insult to Mr. Barnes. It was, however, adopted, and the 
minority gave notice of complaint against this action to 
the General Assembly. At an early period after their 
appointment, the committee sought an interview with Mr. 
Barnes at his study. He received them in a courteous 



204 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

manner, but refused to hold any converse with them as a 
committee, expressing, however, a willingness to converse 
with them as individuals in a private capacity ; and, when 
they were about departing, he handed to them a paper, in 
which he assigned, as reasons for his refusal, the alleged 
unconstitutionality of the proceedings of Presbytery, and 
his unwillingness to recognize their binding force. 

In April, 1831, the committee reported these facts to the 
Presbytery, with Mr. Barnes' written answer. After some 
deliberation, the Presbytery referred the whole case to the 
General Assembly. This reference may be found in extenso 
in the minutes of the Presbytery, and, by those who have 
not access to them, in the Assembly's Digest, pp. 654-55. 
Besides asking the Assembly to decide the case of Mr. 
Barnes, this reference respectfully asked the General As- 
sembly to decide four other questions relating to the rights 
and duties of Presbyterians, under the constitution of the 
church, viz. : 

1. The question whether, when a minister presented 
clean papers from another Presbytery, the Presbytery to 
which he applied was bound to receive him without exami- 
nation, or whether they had a right to examine him? 

2. Whether it is competent for a Presbytery to take up, 
examine, and pronounce upon the doctrines of any printed 
publication, and declare them to be dangerous and erro- 
neous or otherwise, without instituting formal trial of its 
author, in case he be a member of their body? 

3. Do the doctrinal standards of the Presbyterian 
Church embrace the Larger and Shorter Catechisms ; or is 
the Confession of Faith alone obligatory ? 

Along with this reference by the majority (O. S.) of the 
Presbytery, there went up to the Assembly sundry com- 
plaints from the minority, against the action of the Pres- 
bytery. It was alleged by the Old School, that these 
complaints were designed to prevent the decision of the 



COMPLAINTS OF MINORITY. 



= 05 



doctrinal and ordinal questions, contained in the reference, 
by the whole undivided Assembly. They (the complainants) 
had made the effort to convert the Presbytery of Philadel- 
phia into a party, and thus exclude their commissioners 
from a vote. And this use was made of the complaints in 
the Assembly of 183 1. 

In that General Assembly the New School had a small 
majority, and elected Dr. Beman Moderator, who, of course, 
had the shaping of the judicial and other committees. All 
the papers, the reference, and the complaints appear to 
have been referred to the judicial committee, which re- 
ported the complaint of the minority of the Presbytery of 
Philadelphia. The whole proceedings of the Presbytery in 
the case were read ; and also the sermon of Mr. Barnes ; 
the parties submitted the case without argument ; and it 
was resolved to refer the whole case to a select committee. 
Drs. Miller, Matthews, Lansing, Fisk, Spring, and 
McDowell, Mr. Bacon (delegate from the Association 
of Connecticut), Mr. Ross, Mr. Elisha White, with Elders 
Jessup and Napier, were appointed this committee. 

It is worthy of record, because it throws light upon the 
animus of the men now unhappily arrayed into parties, in 
the Presbytery of Philadelphia, that, in their complaint to 
the Assembly, the minority (N. S.) acknowledge that they 
were wrong in sustaining the decision of their Moderator, 
by which the charges preferred by Mr. Hoff and others 
against Mr. Barnes, at the time of his reception, and be- 
fore his installation, were pronounced out of order and 
refused. Their language is, — " This decision, the under- 
signed, of whom the Moderator referred to is one, now 
judge to have been incorrect, because that special meeting 
was called, not only to receive Mr. Barnes, but to transact 
any business relative to his installation. These charges 
should have been constitutionally disposed of, either by 
declaring them irrelevant, or by taking the requisite steps 
18 



20 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

for trying Mr. Barnes on the same."* The Old School 
alleged at the time, that this confession of error, by which 
they, the then minority, had been deprived of their rights, 
was part of a change in the general plan now adopted for 
the evasion of an explicit decision of the doctrinal ques- 
tion. At first, the friends of Mr. Barnes resisted the con- 
demnation of the book, — then they rejected charges against 
the man; but when the book was likely to come under the 
judgment of the General Assembly, they called for a trial 
of the man instead, and as this demand was inconsistent 
with their former action, they were now ready to acknowl- 
edge that action to be wrong. This item of record makes 
it manifest, that the call for a trial of Mr. Barnes, on charges 
made against the man, first came from himself and his 
friends ; and that when, some years afterwards, and after 
he had published his Notes on the Romans, Dr. Junkin 
came forward and tabled charges against the author, he 
did but respond to the call originated and reiterated by 
the very men who raised a clamor against him for doing 
the precise thing which they had demanded. 

The committee of the Assembly, to which the case of 
Mr. Barnes was referred, made a report, originally written 
by Dr. Miller, but greatly modified and emasculated by 
the majority of the committee, which was evidently meant 
as a compromise. This report was adopted, and as it was 
the first official act of the Supreme Judicatory of the church, 
that seemed to look towards a toleration in the church of 
the New Theology, it is put on record in these pages. It 
is as follows : 

"That after bestowing on the case the most deliberate 
and serious consideration, the committee are of opinion, 
that it is neither necessary nor for edification, to go into 
discussion of all the various and minute details which are 



* Minutes of General Assembly of 1S31, p. 176 et al. 



REPORT TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



207 



comprehended in the documents relating to the case. For 
the purpose, however, of bringing the matter in contro- 
versy, as far as possible, to a regular and satisfactory issue, 
they would recommend to the Assembly the adoption of the 
following resolutions : 

" 1. Resolved, That the General Assembly, while it ap- 
preciates the conscientious zeal for the purity of the church, 
by which the Presbytery of Philadelphia is believed to have 
been actuated, in its proceedings in the case of Mr. Barnes; 
and while it judges that the sermon of Mr. Barnes, entitled 
'The Way of Salvation,' contains a number of unguarded 
and objectionable passages ; yet it is of opinion that, espe- 
cially after the explanations given by him of those pas- 
sages, the Presbytery ought to have suffered the whole to 
pass without further notice. 

" 2. Resolved, That, in the judgment of this Assembly, 
the Presbytery of Philadelphia ought to suspend all further 
proceedings in the case of Mr. Barnes. 

"3. Resolved, That it will be expedient, as soon as the 
regular steps can be taken, to divide the Presbytery in 
such a way as will be best calculated to promote the peace 
of the ministers and churches belonging to the Presbytery. 

"With respect to the abstract points proposed to the 
Assembly for their decision, in the reference of the Pres- 
bytery, the committee are of the opinion that, if they be 
answered, they had better be discussed and decided in 
thesi, separate from the case of Mr. Barnes." [Min. 1831, 
pp. 176-180.] 

This action of the Assembly gave great dissatisfaction to 
the Old School men in the church ; and, taken in con- 
nection with other acts of the same Assembly, and with 
utterances of the leaders of the other party, afforded proof, 
as they thought, of a fixed purpose to thwart discipline, to 
protect error, and to delay a decision of the great doctrinal 
questions at issue, until the party abetting these measures 
could become so strong as to revolutionize the church. 
It may be that their apprehensions exceeded the measure 
of the danger ; and there can be little doubt that many 
good men, who voted with the New School, did so with 



208 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

the hope of promoting peace, and because they were not 
convinced that the errors and innovations complained of 
were really so serious and so wide-spread. But in the light 
of events that have since transpired, there can be no 
reasonable doubt, that the leaders of the New School 
party seriously contemplated effecting that which the Old 
School deemed revolutionary. In saying this, their motives 
are not impugned, for it is to be presumed that they deemed 
what they aimed at to be desirable and right. 

It is now manifest, that great preparation had been made 
by the friends of innovation for securing a majority in the 
Assembly of 1831. The gentleman who became the Mod- 
erator of that body had made an extensive tour in the 
South during the preceding winter, and, whilst care for his 
health may have been the prominent object thereof, yet the 
fact that he stated to Dr. Spring that he had known, three 
months before, that, if a member, he would be chosen 
Moderator, and that he had lost eight votes by absence of 
members from Virginia, was pretty clear proof that there 
had been some preconcert. 

During the progress of the troubles connected with the 
case of Mr. Barnes, — 1830, and the winter of 1831, — the 
conflict between the Boards of the church and the Volun- 
tary societies which sought to supersede them in their 
work, was waxing warmer. The party which sustained Mr. 
Barnes was nearly identical with that which favored the 
Voluntary societies. Dr. Absalom Peters, a Welshman by 
birth, and a Congregationalist by conviction, a man of 
great ability, tact, and adroitness, was the Secretary of the 
Home Missionary Society. This gentleman had been en- 
deavoring to effect a sort of union between the Assembly's 
Board and the Society of which he was the chief actuary. 
The Presbytery of Cincinnati had, doubtless through his 
suggestion and influence, addressed a communication to 
the Board of Missions upon the subject of this union. To 



CONFLICT ABOUT HOME MISSIONS. 209 

this the Board replied, assigning reasons for declining the 
union, and showing its inexpediency. This letter of the 
Board furnished the pretext for six letters from Dr. Peters, 
headed "A Plea for Union in the West;" in which, with 
much adroitness and plausibility, he assailed the Board of 
Missions, charged it with inefficiency and a disposition to 
distract the efforts of the church, by refusing to co-operate 
with the Home Missionary Society, and strongly hinted 
that the Board did not "provide things honest in the sight 
of all men." In his sixth letter, he issued what was well 
understood to be a rallying call to those that agreed with 
him, to come in force to the next General Assembly. He 
said that he had endeavored "to persuade the contending 
parties" — i.e. the Board and the Home Missionary Society 
— "to become one," and declared that upon that result 
"my heart is fixed." And he farther says, "What meas- 
ures ought now to be adopted I do not feel prepared even 
to suggest. So far as the Western States are concerned, I 
trust our brethren, on the ground, will be prepared to ex- 
press their wishes to the next General Assembly." These 
letters were published in the Cincinnati Journal, in Decem- 
ber, 1830, and January, 1831, and soon afterward copied 
into the New York Evangelist. They were well adapted 
to shake the confidence of the churches in the integrity of 
the Assembly's Board, to promote its union with, or its 
absorption by, the Home Missionary Society, and, at the 
same time, to summon all the dependents and friends of 
that Society to come to the Assembly in force. 

The Board replied to this " Plea for Union," in a pam- 
phlet published on the 2d of March, 1831. Dr. Peters re- 
joined in April, in a forty-eight-page pamphlet. 

Whilst the Home Missionary Society was thus rallying 

its friends, the friends of Mr. Barnes, and others who 

favored the New England divinity, were also active, and a 

considerable body of ministers and elders, who occupied a 

18* 



21 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

middle ground between the parties, men in the main sound 
in the faith, but who were willing to go almost an}- length 
for the sake of peace, also sought to be represented in the 
Assembly, in order to repress agitation and promote peace. 
Under such influences the Commissioners to the Assembly 
of 1 83 1 were chosen. 

Meanwhile, the discussions of the questions of doctrine 
and order, that were involved in the controversy, went on, 
and waxed warm — sometimes acrimonious. Mr. Barnes 
was installed in June, 1830, and shortly afterward a pam- 
phlet, entitled "A Sketch of the Debate and Proceedings 
of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, in regard to the Instal- 
lation of the Rev. Albert Barnes," was published in New 
York. This pamphlet was well adapted to intensify the 
spirit of party, by its provoking unfairness to the Old 
School men, and its adroit appeals to the zeal and passions 
of the New. It held up Mr. Barnes' opponents in the 
most offensive light, and strove to arouse public odium 
against them by partisan glosses of the facts. 

Some three months after its publication, this pamphlet 
was answered and reviewed by the Rev. Wm. L. McCalla, 
in a pamphlet in which he gave a history of the pro- 
ceedings in Mr. Barnes' case. Meanwhile, the religious 
newspapers contained many articles upon the agitating 
questions. All the weekly papers, at this time, were in 
the interest of the New School, or of the (so-called) "peace 
men." The Philadelphian, then edited by the Rev. Dr. 
E. S. Ely, had a pretty large circulation in Pennsylvania 
and the West. Dr. Ely at first seemed disposed to make 
his paper an impartial medium, but in a short time he be- 
came ardently enlisted in the New School cause, and threw 
the influence of his paper so fully upon that side, that it 
was deemed necessary to establish another paper in the 
interests of orthodoxy. This was the origin of the Pres- 
byterian, which was commenced in 1831. Dr. Ely had 



DISRUPTION PREDICTED. 2 II 

published, in the Philadelphian, a history of the Barnes 
troubles, such as the Old School considered unfair and 
one-sided, and this led the clerk of the Presbytery, Mr. 
(afterwards Dr.) Engles, to publish in pamphlet form, "A 
True and Complete Narrative" of all the proceedings in 
that case. 

The religious press of New England also took part in 
these agitating discussions. The organ of the New Haven 
theology, the Christian Spectator, interfered, and its 
number for June, 1831, was issued a month or more ahead 
of time, in order, as was supposed, to exert influence upon 
the approaching Assembly, in favor of Mr. Barnes and the 
Voluntary societies. With a forecast and a candor far 
transcending his ecclesiastical delicacy, the Spectator warns 
" those who seem bent on driving Mr. Barnes from the 
Presbytery of Philadelphia, that they are taking upon 
themselves a responsibility of no ordinary character, since 
the principle on which they act, if carried into full opera- 
tion, must create a total disruption of the Presbyterian 
Church in the United States, and a consequent sacrifice, 
to an immense extent, of some of the dearest interests of 
the Redeemer's kingdom, both at home and abroad. We 
state the subject thus strongly, because every one, we sup- 
pose, understands that the case of Mr. Barnes is not that 
of an individual. The real question at issue is, whether 
New England Calvinism shall any longer be tolerated in 
the Presbyterian Church of this country." Thus did the 
organ of New Haven predict the disruption seven years 
before it occurred, and avowed that a refusal to tolerate 
the New Theology would inevitably lead to disruption. The 
only alternative was, tolerate the new divinity or submit to 
disruption. 

The Old School party in the church, if disposed to make 
exertions to shape this important Assembly to their purposes, 
labored under great disadvantages, especially for want of 



212 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

the use of a religious press in their interest. The Presby- 
terian was yet in its infancy, all the other weeklies were 
either in the interest of the New School or of the middle 
men, and the Biblical Repository, though thoroughly sound 
in its theology, was slow to be convinced that there was any 
great necessity for the measures of resistance to innovation 
which the Old School had inaugurated. Besides this, it 
cannot be denied that the Old School men, relying upon 
the supposed goodness of their cause, were less skilful and 
energetic in using means to promote it. 

Such were the circumstances and influences under which 
the General Assembly of 1831, whose proceedings we have 
in part recorded, was constituted. It proved the largest that 
had ever convened, and in its acts were more fully developed, 
than ever before, the elements of that great struggle, which, 
seven years later, resulted in the division of the Presbyte- 
rian Church. From its opening to its dissolution, the array 
of party was distinctly visible. The New School were in 
the ascendant, the result of influences indicated above. 
For Moderator they selected a man fully committed, by 
his sermons, and by his published work on the Atonement, 
to the New Theology, and also, by his education and asso- 
ciations, to the "new measures" employed to promote re- 
vivals, and to the hybrid form of government which had 
grown out of the "Plan of Union." 

Not only did the decision in Mr. Barnes' case indicate 
that "the revolution was not to go back," but, at the very 
opening of the Assembly, Mr. Clement Tuttle, a "Com- 
mitteeman," commissioned by the Presbytery of Grand 
River, was, by a vote of the majority, admitted to a seat 
as a member of the Assembly ; and although towards the 
close, when the majority had changed by the departure 
of some members, it was declared irregular to appoint 
persons as commissioners who had never been ordained 
Ruling Elders, there was a disposition shown by the New 



VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 213 

School to perpetuate the anomaly of receiving Committee- 
men. 

But the policy of the New School party in this Assembly 
which excited the most alarm, was the effort boldly made 
to have the Board of Missions absorbed by the Home Mis- 
sionary Society. The Annual Report of the Board brought 
the subject before the Assembly, and, besides this, there 
were several overtures from the West. The Report of the 
Board was this year more than usually encouraging; and, 
in view of their past success, and of pledges of large sums 
of money from " friends of the present Board of Missions," 
they declared it their purpose to "supply, in the course of 
five years, every vacant Presbyterian congregation and des- 
titute district that may be disposed to receive aid from this 
Board, with a faithful minister of the gospel ; and they do 
hereby pledge themselves to extend prompt and efficient aid 
to all feeble congregations throughout the Valley (of the 
Mississippi) which shall apply to them for assistance," etc. 

The Home Missionary Society had been striving to get 
exclusive possession of the great Valley of the Mississippi, 
and this indication of a purpose on the part of the Assembly's 
Board to cultivate that field with energy, aroused the opposi- 
tion of the majority of the Assembly, who favored the schemes 
of the Home Missionary Society. The usual vote to ap- 
prove of the report was refused ; it was proposed to strike 
out that part of the report which contained the pledge of 
aid to the feeble churches of the Valley ; but this was for- 
borne, and, with certain animadversions upon the report 
made by the committee to which it had been referred, it 
was "returned to the Board for its disposal." 

The Memorials on Missions in the West had been re- 
ferred to a committee, which reported Dr. Peters' plan for 
a union with the Home Missionary Society. A substitute 
was proposed, referring the subject to a conference of the 
Western Synods, with a view to have them agree upon a 



2i 4 L[FE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

plan, and report it to the Assembly. "Pending the deci- 
sion, the movements hostile to the Board reached a crisis. 
A motion had been made by Dr. Richards, that a commit- 
tee should be raised to nominate a Board of Missions. Dr. 
William Wylie moved a postponement of this, to make 
room for a motion to reappoint the old Board. In the 
progress of the discussion, the Rev. E. N. Kirk* stated 
that he came to the Assembly for the purpose of accom- 
plishing two objects, — the vindication of Mr. Barnes, and 
the dismissal of Mr. Russell from the service of the Board 
on account of his course in the case of Mr. Barnes. He 
intimated that these were the objects of his party, and that 
candor required their avowal. The means on which the 
party relied for the latter purpose was the election of a 
new Board, which was expected to amalgamate with the A. 
H. Missionary Society, "f 

Dr. Richards' motion was carried by a majority of twenty- 
two, and a committee, composed wholly of those hostile to 
the Assembly's Board, was appointed, with Dr. Hillyer, a 
member of the Board of Directors of the Home Missionary 
Society, as its chairman. This committee soon reported, 
nominating a list in which the enemies of the Board greatly 
preponderated. Many Old School men were on the list, 
but they were in remote parts of the church ; whilst in the 
Synods immediately adjacent to Philadelphia, the place of 
the meetings of the Board, there were two to one of New 
School men. Dr. Green and a few of the old members 
were retained, but so few as to be powerless in a vote. 

The plan was for the new Board to be constituted and to 
meet during the sessions of the Assembly, and the Old 
School feared that the design was to enter at once into such 
relations with the Home Missionary Society as would bind 



* Shortly afterwards pastor of a Congregational church in Boston, 
f Baird's Hist. N. School, pp. 377-78. 



ADOPTION OF THE REPORT. 



2«S 



the church to act through it. The Assembly was thrown into 
an intense ferment by the Report of the Nominating Com- 
mittee. The purpose was so transparent as no longer to 
be disguised. Many claimed the floor at once ; the Mod- 
erator could not preserve order; and, to give time for 
the storm to lull, a short recess was taken. 

After the recess the Assembly engaged in prayer for 
divine direction. Various plans of compromise were pro- 
posed, and finally a committee, composed of Rev. F. A. 
Ross, Dr. Peters, and Colonel Jessup on the one side, and 
Dr. Green, Dr. Spring, and Mr. R. J. Breckenridge on the 
other, was appointed. This committee very soon reported 
a proposition to refer the existing difficulties, growing out 
of the separate action of the Assembly's Board and the A. 
H. M. Society, to a conference of the seven Western 
Synods, with permission for all the Synods and Presbyteries 
of the Valley of the Mississippi to take part in the confer- 
ence if they desired it, and recommending that the present 
Board of Missions be reappointed.* 

An effort was made to strike out the clause of this report 
that admitted to the conference, if they should desire it, 
all the Synods and Presbyteries of the Valley ; but the 
motion was lost, and the report adopted. 

It will not be necessary to follow the conflict, in regard 
to this great question of missions, through all its subse- 
quent stages. The object in placing on record so much 
as we have written, is to show that a great necessity existed 
for definitive action, both as regards doctrine and order ; 
that the peace of the church could never be restored with- 
out such action ; and that, in coming forward, with a view 
to secure a final decision of the great doctrinal issues, upon 
which all the others hung, Dr. Junkin undertook a work for 
his church, for his generation, and for posterity, the diffi- 

* Minutes General Assembly, 1831, pp. 183, 184, i8S, 189. 



2i6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

culties of which were only exceeded by its vast impor- 
tance. 

It may be satisfactory, however, to the readers of this 
book, who may not have access to other histories of that 
period, to state, in brief, the results of the action of the 
General Assembly, above detailed. The immediate result 
of the adoption of the report of the committee of com- 
promise was, to save the Board of Missions from that 
destruction which at one time seemed so imminent, and to 
save the church from being handed over, with her hands 
tied, to the American Home Missionary Society. 

Another valuable result was the gaining of time for the 
church to exercise a "sober second thought," and for the 
recuperative energy, inherent in Presbyterianism, to be 
called out. Every week's delay was a loss to the abettors 
of innovation. Every week shed more light before the 
people, and the office-bearers of the church, in regard to 
the real character of the issues of the conflict ; and just so 
fast and so far as these became known, the mass of sound 
Presbyterians were roused to a sense of the church's 
danger. 

This process of enlightenment was greatly aided by a 
publication made by the Rev. Mr. Bacon, the delegate to 
the Assembly from the Association of Connecticut. Mr. 
Bacon, though not really a member of the Assembly, had 
been put upon the committee that shaped the deliverance 
in the case of Mr. Barnes, and after he went home he 
wrote the article in question, in which he taunted the 
Assembly with having abandoned the principles of the 
Presbyterian form of government, in deciding the Barnes 
case, and with having adopted Congregational modes of 
acting in that case. After stating the course which he 
supposed a Presbyterian body would have pursued, he 
proceeds : 

"But this course was not adopted. There was a reluc- 



PUBLICATION BY REV. MR. BACON. 



217 



tance, in a part of the Assembly, against a regular trial and 
decision in the case. . . . Not even the venerable 
editor of the Christian Advocate will charge the venerable 
professor, on whose repeated motion the Assembly at last 
consented to waive a regular trial, with being engaged in 
any conspiracy against the purity of the Presbyterian 
Church. Yet the fact was, that Dr. Miller did earnestly 
deprecate the evils which would follow a regular trial and 
decision, and on that ground persuaded the parties to forego 
their constitutional rights, and to submit their case, with- 
out trial, in the expectation that the Assembly would en- 
deavor to find some ground on which the parties might be 
at peace. I was disappointed in this, and yet I rejoiced in 
it. As a curious observer, I was disappointed, because I 
expected to see the practical operation of your system of 
judicatories and appeals, in a case in which, if it has any 
superiority over our system of friendly arbitrations, that 
superiority would be manifest. ... I came to the 
General Assembly disposed to \earn what are the actual 
advantages of that towering system of ecclesiastical courts 
which constitutes the glory of Presbyterianism, and of that 
power to terminate all controversies which is supposed to 
reside in the supreme judicature. 

" Of course, I could not but be at once astonished and 
gratified, to see that unconscious homage which was ren- 
dered to Congregational principles, when Presbyterians of 
the highest form, pure from every infection and tincture of 
independency, untouched with any suspicion of leaning 
towards New England, strenuously deprecated the regular 
action of the Presbyterian system, in a case which, of all 
cases, was obviously best fitted to demonstrate its excel- 
lence. I was astonished. ... I could not but ask 
within myself, What is this lauded system of power and 
jurisdiction worth, these judicatures, court rising above 
court in regular gradation, what are they worth, if you are 
afraid to try your system in the hour of need ? Yet, when 
I heard those brethren arguing in favor of referring the 
matter to a select committee, which should endeavor to 
mediate between the parties, and to propose some terms of 
peace and mutual oblivion ; in other words, to act as a 
Congregational ecclesiastical council would act, I was 
convinced they were in the right. . . . And I sup- 

19 



2i 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKLX. 

posed that the general conviction was that it was best to 
go to work, on that occasion, in something like the Con- 
gregational way, rather than in the Presbyterian."* 

We have quoted just enough of this remarkable paper 
to show that, in the judgment of a Congregationalist 
wh6se heart was with the New School, and who had helped 
to effect the result reached by the majority of the Assem- 
bly, that action was a gross violation of the constitution 
and principles of the Presbyterian Church. The paper 
itself aided to convince the people of our church that this 
was so. 

But it would be unfair to the minority of that Assembly 
to leave the impression that they did not resist, with all 
their power, this triumph of error, and this prostration of 
Presbyterian order. There were, in that Assembly, men 
firm and faithful, who raised their voices and their votes 
against every act of this huge burlesque on discipline. 
The Rev. Wm. L. McCalla, who was not in the house 
when the other members of the committee to defend the 
action of Presbytery waived their right to be heard, pre- 
sented a paper asking, for his right to perform the duty 
intrusted to him by his Presbytery. In this earnest paper 
he set forth that one side (in the Barnes case) had been 
heard, and the other not. " The complaint," said he, " is 
a protracted and highly argumentative document. As the 
Presbytery never saw it, they will expect their commis- 
sioners to answer it for them. My colleagues could not, 
and would not, waive my right. When my momentary 
absence, at the time, can be shown to be so disorderly as 
to deprive me of my commission, then, and then only, let 
my Presbytery be cut off from a hearing. . . . Let 
the complainants be cheered with the smiles of popular 
favor, and let me appear under the lowering frown of an 

* Christian Advocate, 1832, p. 20. 



ROBERT J. BRECKENRIDGE. 2 ig 

overwhelming majority. Only allow me the constitutional 
right of speaking for Christ and his people, and I am satis- 
fied. If refused, I shall call heaven and earth to witness 
that we are denied a hearing which we earnestly solicit, 
and to which we are entitled by the laws of God and 
man." But the majority refused him a hearing. 

Another honest and vigorous voice was raised against 
these proceedings. A young lawyer from Kentucky, 
who had been in the Legislature of that State, and who 
was" beginning to be known as a man of great intellect 
and indomitable courage, sat as a Ruling Elder in that 
Assembly. He, with a tone of solemn expostulation, and 
in words which none but himself could so effectively em- 
ploy, pointed out the enormity of the conduct of all who 
acquiesced in the compromise. Both parties, he alleged, 
had acted against their avowed conscientious convictions, 
as expressed in their speeches. The friends of Mr. Barnes 
had voted to condemn as "unguarded and objectionable" 
that which they had previously fully endorsed ; and his 
opponents had voted those to be only " incautious expres- 
sions" which they had declared to be dangerous errors; 
and they also voted to censure the Presbytery for what 
they believed to have been a proper course of action. 
"We have agreed," said he, "to bury the truth; and be- 
fore two years God will correct us for it."* This young 
lawyer, some two years afterward, became a minister of the 
gospel, and has inscribed the name of Robert J. Brecken- 
ridge in an honorable and high place in the history of his 
church and of his generation. 

* Baird's Hist., p. 371. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Conflicting Views about Foreign Missions — Low State of Missionary Spirit 
— Dr. J. H. Rice's Memorial — Baltimore Action — Action of Assembly 
of 183 1 — Formation of Western Foreign Missionary Society — Position 
of the American Board — Dr. Alexander and Mr. Baird's Opinions — Home 
Missionary Contest — Cincinnati Convention — History of Doctrinal^ Con- 
flict resumed — Action of Assembly of 1831 in Barnes' Case — " Elective 
Affinity" Presbytery recommended — Resistance of Synods of Philadelphia, 
Pittsburg, and Cincinnati — Rule of Examination — Reference to Assembly 
— Protests and Replies — Assembly erects an Elective Affinity Presbytery — 
Synod, Nullifies— Duffield's Trial— Beecher's Trial. 

IN addition to the causes, already mentioned, producing 
diversity of sentiment in the Presbyterian Church, and 
tending towards disruption, there arose about this time the 
question of the mode of conducting Foreign Missions. 
We have shown, in a former chapter, that the Presbyterian 
Church in America considered herself a missionary society, 
and that from her earliest organization she acted in that 
capacity. The General Synod, in 1752 and 1756, had 
voted funds to aid the Rev. David Brainerd in his mission 
among the Indians ; and, as we have mentioned, collections 
were taken up at a later period for the use of his brother 
John in his Indian mission in New Jersey, and this was 
continued until his death, in 1781. In 1766, Messrs. 
Beatty and Duffield were appointed to make a missionary 
tour of exploration among the Western Indians ; and they 
made a report of their tour to the Synod of 1767, detailing 
their journey as far as the Muskingum, and its results. But 
no missions were actually established until the ^beginning 
of the present century, when the commission of the Synod 
of Virginia sent out six missionaries to perform transient 
( 220 ) 



LO IV STATE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 221 

labor, two to Detroit, two to the Senecas, and two to the 
Muskingum. The Synod of Pittsburg, the daughter and 
successor of the Synod of Virginia, continued to make 
some efforts for the evangelizing of the Indians, and among 
others established a mission on the Maumee. About 1805, 
Mr. Blackburn planted mission-schools among the Chero- 
kees in the South ; and the Synod of the Carolinas had 
established one among the Catawbas. 

In 1816, the General Assembly appointed a committee 
to correspond with similar committees of the Associate 
Reformed and the Dutch Reformed Churches, with a view 
to uniting all three bodies into a Missionary Society. This 
resulted next year in the formation of "The United Foreign 
Missionary Society," which was the organ of the three 
Presbyterian bodies which joined in its establishment, 
until 1826, when, after certain negotiations, it was united 
with the American Board, with the consent of the Synods 
and of the General Assembly, and by them this Board was 
recommended to the confidence and patronage of the 
churches.* The churches of our body continued to give 
to the American Board the money they collected for 
Foreign Missions ; but it was becoming manifest, from 
every year's experience, that the church was not aroused 
to her duty in this great work, and probably never would 
be, unless other means of developing the missionary spirit 
should be found. 

Men of broad evangelical views and of warm hearts, in 
different parts of the church, seem to have had their minds 
turned, without apparent concert, to the backward state of 
Foreign Missions in the church, and deplored it. Many 
lamented the fact that the church had been diverted from her 
original position as a Missionary Society to become a mere 
auxiliary of the American Board. Whilst they rejoiced in 

* Baird's Digest, and Minutes of the Assembly. 
J 9* 



222 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

the wisdom and prudence with which that Society managed 
its affairs, they saw that it was not in a position to develop 
the missionary energy of the Presbyterian Church. It may 
be, too, that this conviction was increased by the growing 
distrust in regard to some New England men, in connection 
with doctrinal troubles. But before the strife between the 
"Schools," Old and New, had reached any crisis looking 
to division, this feeling had grown strong. 

In 1830, the subject of Foreign Missions was discussed in 
the ministers' meeting in Baltimore ; and in October of 
that year the Rev. John Breckenridge, of lovely memory, 
offered a paper, which was adopted by the Presbytery of 
Baltimore, deploring the low state of the Foreign Mis- 
sionary spirit in our church, recognizing the necessity of 
increased effort to meet the claims of the heathen world, 
and ending with 

"Resolved, That we will make the attempt, as a body, 
from this time to support at least one missionary in the 
Foreign field."* 

A few days after this action, as Mr. Baird informs us, 
as Dr. John H. Rice was passing through Baltimore, he 
was waited upon, at Dr. Nevins', by a committee of the 
Presbytery, and the great question was canvassed. Dr. 
Rice was asked to prepare a paper which might arouse 
the church to her duty. He promised "to think of it;" 
and fulfilled the promise by dictating from his death-bed 
an overture to the General Assembly, which was presented 
in the following May. That great and good man, in this 
memorial, did not seem to contemplate an entire sepa- 
ration of the Assembly from the American Board, but a 
"co-ordinate Presbyterian branch, sufficiently connected 
with the Assembly to satisfy scrupulous Presbyterians, yet 

* Bait. Magazine, 1838, p. 221. 



ACTION OF ASSEMBLY. 



223 



in union with the original Board." "The overture was 
presented, and a committee was appointed to confer with 
the American Board." It was considered by some as 
unwisely constituted,* — that is, if the object of Dr. 
Rice's overture was to be attained. The truth is, that it 
was made a party question by the majority of the Assembly. 
The committee was elected by ballot, and Drs. McDowell, 
Richards, and McAuley were chosen, all of whom were 
opposed, at that time, to any change in the relations of 
the church to the American Board. Drs. Alexander, John 
Breckenridge, and E. P. Swift were the defeated candidates. 
By this action of the majority of the Assembly, the cause 
of Foreign Missions was placed in the same category with 
that of Home Missions and Education, — the subject of eccle- 
siastical contention. The Old School saw, or thought they 
saw, a disposition on the part of the New to withhold the 
church, in her corporate ecclesiastical capacity, from all 
three of the fields of her legitimate labor, — Education, 
Home Missions, and Foreign Missions. They thought they 
discerned a fixed purpose to bind the Presbyterian Church 
to the three great voluntary societies, the American Educa- 
tion and Home Missionary Societies, and the American 
Board of Foreign Missions. From this they recoiled. And 
the words uttered in Dr. Nevin's study at the interview with 
Dr. Rice, became from 1831 onward the rally ing-cry to 
the church, — "The Presbyterian Church a Missionary 
society !"f 

Inasmuch as the vote in the General Assembly of 1831 
indicated a disposition, on the part of the majority, to pre- 
vent the formation of an ecclesiastical organization for 
Foreign Missions, and a determination that the church 
should continue to act through the American Board, the 



* Gillett, vol. ii. p. 454. 

I Foote's Sketches of Virginia, vol. ii. p. 497. 



224 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 



friends of church action took prompt measures for ecclesi- 
astical action. The Synod of Pittsburg resolved itself into 
"The Western Foreign Missionary Society" in that same 
Fall (1831), under a constitution which made provision for 
the co-operation of other Synods and Presbyteries, thus look- 
ing to its extension to the whole church, and its ultimate 
adoption by the General Assembly. In this movement 
such men as Drs. E. P. Swift, Thomas D. Baird, A. D. 
Campbell, W. C. Anderson, and the venerable Elisha Mc- 
Curdy were active. The Hon. Harmar Denny was the 
first President; Rev. Thos. D. Baird, Vice-President; Dr. 
Swift, Corresponding Secretary; and Mr. McCurdy, Treas- 
urer. Before the meeting of the Assembly of 1832, funds 
had been raised, Africa chosen as its first field of opera- 
tions, and it was ready to enter upon its work. When 
the Assembly of 1832 convened, Dr. McAuley, from the 
committee to confer with the American Board, presented a 
report, signed by the conferees, which, in an elaborate 
argument, endeavored to prove that, on account of the 
national character of that Board, it was best for the 
churches that had hitherto operated through it to continue 
to do so; and proposed, that in order to bring the Presby- 
terian churches more fully up to the work, "the prudential 
committee of the American Board should take prompt and 
efficient measures, by agencies and other ways, to bring 
the subject of Foreign Missions before the individual mem- 
bers and congregations of the Presbyterian body ; and that 
the General Assembly and subordinate judicatories of that 
church give their distinct and efficient sanction and aid to 
the measures that shall be adopted for this purpose." 

At the meeting of the American Board, at which this 
report was considered, Dr. Miller, who was present as a 
member, offered the following minute as further expressive 
of its views, viz. : 

"While this Board accept and approve of the fore- 



OPINIONS OF DRS. BAIRD AND ALEXANDER. 



225 



going report as expressing— their firm opinion on the 
subject referred to the Committee of Conference, — Re- 
solved, That if the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church, or any of its subordinate judicatories, shall event- 
ually think proper to form any association for conducting 
Foreign Missions separately from the American Board, this 
Board will regard such association with fraternal feelings, 
and without the least disposition to interfere with its organi- 
zation or proceedings." 

"This amendment," says Dr. Miller, "was very uncere- 
moniously negatived, only two members of the Board rising 
in its favor."* Thus a fixed purpose was exhibited by the 
Board i-tself to hold the Presbyterian Church as its auxil- 
iary, and not only to do for that church its Foreign Mis- 
sionary work, but even to educate its congregations in their 
evangelical duties, "by agencies and otherwise," under the 
control of its "Prudential Committee." Resolutions to 
this effect were proposed as part of the report, and the 
attempt was made thus to forestall ecclesiastical action. 

Dr. Baird resisted these resolutions, and informed the 
Assembly of the organization and activity of the Western 
Missionary Society; and warned them that the reso- 
lutions would "do the American Board more hurt than 
good." In opposition to them, Dr. A. Alexander said, 
" These resolutions will so commit the Assembly that Ave 
cannot with propriety, at any time or for any reason, 
organize a Board of Foreign Missions. It also contains a 
virtual censure of the society already formed at Pittsburg. 
... I am in favor of the American Board. I am a mem- 
ber of it, and have confidence in it. . . . But I am nor 
willing that the Assembly should thus bind themselves and 
their successors forever from- acting by themselves. Sup- 
pose the charter-members, who all reside in Massachusetts, 

* Baird's History, p. 458. 



226 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

should hereafter fall into great errors in regard to the man- 
ner of conducting missions, or into fundamental errors in 
doctrine. I have no suspicion of the kind. Bat we have 
no security that such a thing will never take place. And 
is this supreme judicatory of the Presbyterian Church to be 
so committed that it cannot withdraw the control of its 
Foreign Missions from such a Board?"* 

The resolutions were rejected. The Assembly refused to 
express any opinion upon the principles contained in the 
report ; they recommended the American Board to the 
affection and patronage of the churches, but took no notice 
of the Western Foreign Missionary Society, except a brief 
allusion to its formation in the narrative of the state of re- 
ligion, as indicative of a deeper interest in the subject of 
Foreign Missions. 

The conflict in regard to the subject of Home Missions 
was transferred temporarily to Cincinnati by the action of 
the Assembly of 1831, referring that subject to the Synods 
and Presbyteries in the Valley of the Mississippi. Efforts 
were promptly made by the friends of the Home Mission- 
ary Society to call a Convention at Cincinnati, with the 
purpose of so defining its objects as to favor their plans, and 
to constitute the Society so that it would be rather a mass- 
meeting than a representative body. They proposed, in a 
circular, "to leave it to every Presbytery to send as many 
delegates as they choose, or may find convenient ; allowing, 
also, any intelligent members of the Presbyterian churches 
to attend and aid in the deliberations, if they observe the 
same order as will be expected of delegates appointed by 
Presbyteries, "f 

This plan would have put it in the power of the New 
School men in and around Cincinnati to control the Con- 
vention. But the Presbytery of West Lexington was called 

* Baird's History, pp. 459, 460. f Ibid., vol. ii. p. 381. 



CINCINNA TI CONVENTION. 



227 



together soon after the publication of this circular, and 
proposed a more equitable plan, asking all the Presbyteries 
to send delegates in the ratio of their representation in 
the Assembly. Several other Presbyteries approved this 
plan, and. the Convention was organized upon it. 

In this Convention appeared such men as Dr. Blythe, 
Dr. T. D. Baird, Dr. Steel, and R. J. Breckenridge, Esq. 
The first-named was President. It was in session a week. 
Its deliberations did much to inaugurate a more wholesome 
and conservative sentiment in regard to the duty of the 
church on the subject of Missions ; and the final minute 
embodied a statement of the facts and views that were 
elicited during the discussions of the Convention, and the 
wishes of the several Presbyteries represented, as the basis 
of, and the reason for, the Resolution, " That, under these 
circumstances, they deem it inexpedient to propose any 
change in the General Assembly's mode of conducting 
Missions ; as they fully approve of that now in successful 
operation ; and that the purity, peace, and prosperity of 
the Presbyterian Church materially depend on the active 
and efficient aid which the Sessions and the Presbyteries 
under its care may afford the Assembly's Board." The 
minute was adopted by 54 to 15. A resolution was then 
offered commendatory of the work which the Home Mis- 
sionary Society was doing within our church, but the reso- 
lution was indefinitely postponed by a strong vote.* 

Having brought the history of the missionary phases of 
the great struggle to the point and period at which the tide 
was turned in favor of ecclesiastical organization, it will 
be necessary to go back and bring up the narrative of that 
part of the conflict which related to doctrine and discipline. 

The Assembly of 1831, in the minute adopted in the 
case of Mr. Barnes, had not only failed to sustain an effort 

* Minutes of Convention, as quoted by S. J. Baird, vol. ii. p. 386. 



228 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

to arrest doctrinal error, which they acknowledged to have 
been prompted by "conscientious zeal for the purity of the 
church," but they gave judgment that all further efforts 
of the kind in Mr. Barnes' case ought to be suspended by 
the Presbytery of Philadelphia. Not only so, but they 
suggested "the expediency of dividing that Presbytery in 
such a way as to separate those that were willing to tolerate 
the alleged errors from those who thought that such errors 
in doctrine ought not to be allowed in the Presbyterian 
Church. A memorial was presented to that Assembly, 
asking them to carry out this recommendation, and divide 
that Presbytery at once, and to erect the members who sus- 
tained Mr. Barnes into a second Presbytery. This was 
opposed on the ground of want of constitutional power in 
the Assembly to do it. Mr. R. J. Breckenridge made a 
powerful argument against it. The previous question being 
called and negatived, the whole matter was indefinitely 
postponed, under the operation of the rule.* 

The Synod of Philadelphia met in Baltimore on the 27th 
of October, 1831. Dr. Junkin was chosen Moderator, and, 
of course, took no active part in its discussions or proceed- 
ings. In pursuance of the recommendation of the Gen- 
eral Assembly, two propositions for the division of the 
Presbytery of Philadelphia were brought before the Synod, 
one from the majority (O. S.), asking for a geographical 
division by the line of Market Street ; the other from the 
minority, asking that certain members named should be 
erected into a second Presbytery. Some of these members 
lived north and some south of Market Street. They also 
asked that certain churches on both sides of said line be 
attached to the new Presbytery. The request for a terri- 
torial division had been adopted by Presbytery in full 
session, on the 19th of October preceding; the other came 

* Baird's Hist., p. 392. 



SYNODICAL ACTION. 



229 



up by memorial from eleven ministers, including Mr. Barnes. 
A motion to grant the request of the Presbytery for a geo- 
graphical division was made, and discussed at length, the 
New School members opposing, and insisting upon eclectic 
division. At length Dr. Engles moved the following paper, 
which was adopted, viz. : 

" Whereas, The Presbytery of Philadelphia, at their last 
stated meeting, resolved, in compliance with the decision 
of the General Assembly, to recommend a division of said 
Presbytery by a geographical line ; and whereas, the mi- 
nority of said Presbytery, dissatisfied with the aforesaid 
arrangement, have petitioned to divide the Presbytery upon 
other principles; and whereas, it appears to this Synod 
that it will best subserve the purity and peace of that sec- 
tion of the church embraced by said Presbytery, that they 
should remain in their present undivided state until the 
members of it can harmonize in a geographical division ; 
it is therefore 

"Resolved, That whilst this Synod respectfully regard 
the recommendation of the last General Assembly, yet be- 
lieving that it has originated in a misapprehension of the 
real state of the church in this section of the country, they 
consider it, in every point of view, inexpedient to divide 
the said Presbytery, and do therefore dismiss both the 
recommendation of the Presbytery and the prayer of the 
petitioners." 

After the adoption of this minute, Dr. Ely and others 
declared their intention of complaining to the next General 
Assembly, and asking it for a division of the Presbytery 
of Philadelphia.* 

Before the Synod, at this meeting, also came a com- 
plaint, from the minority of the Presbytery of Philadel- 
phia, against the action of said Presbytery in adopting the 
following standing rule, viz. : 

"That every minister or licentiate coming to this Pres- 
bytery by certificate from another Presbytery or other 

* Minutes of Synod, pp. 5, 6, 7, 9. 
20 



230 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

ecclesiastical body, shall submit to an examination before 
he be received." 

The Synod took up and considered the complaint ; the 
complainants and the Presbytery were fully heard ; the roll 
was called and members expressed their opinion, and then 
it was resolved to refer the whole subject to the next Gen- 
eral Assembly.* 

Dr. Skinner and others gave notice of protest, and of their 
intention to complain to the next General Assembly. Just 
as the Synod was about to adjourn, this protest was pre- 
sented, signed by twenty-two ministers and elders. The 
protestants assigned three reasons for their protest : 

" I. Because the matter thereby referred to the Assem- 
bly would have been regularly brought before that body, 
and in a manner more likely to insure a definitive issue, by 
appeal or complaint; while in that case the complainants to 
the Synod would not have had to meet the disadvantage 
of having the Synod, who virtually gave judgment in a 
resolution of last year, among their judges in the Assem- 
bly. 2. Because the Book of Discipline requires, that 
after the roll has been called the final vote shall be taken. 
(Sec. iii. Art. IX.) 3. Because the Book of Discipline 
(Sec. ii. Art. III.), which speaks of references, while it con- 
cedes the right of reference ' for ultimate trial and de- 
cision,' does not seem to contemplate a right of referring 
simply for decision after trial has been gone through." 

As there was no time to prepare an answer to the pro- 
test before Synod adjourned, Messrs. Engles and Junkin, 
the Moderator, were appointed a committee to answer it, 
and publish the answer with the Minutes. They prepared 
an answer, which bears evidence of having been written 
by Mr. Junkin ; and as it, together with the protest itself, 
throws light upon the spirit of those unhappy times, and 



* Minutes of Synod, pp. 6, 7, 8. 



ANSWER TO PROTEST. 



231 



the modes of conducting the controversy, we condense its 
answers to the several points of the protest : 

"The protestants, in this case, have, in the opinion of 
your committee, no just grounds of protest, as they have 
not been in any sense aggrieved. Their first reason for 
protest is divided into two parts : 1st. The allegation that 
the matter in question would have been more likely to 
come to a definitive issue had it gone up by appeal, than 
by reference. This reason would be good if the matter 
had originated in the Synod ; but as it originated in a Pres- 
bytery, and was brought to Synod by complaint, the Assem- 
bly will be under the same obligations to issue it as if it 
had gone directly, by complaint, from the Presbytery to 
the Assembly. 2d. They prefer it going up by complaint, 
because that would deprive the Synod of a vote in the 
Assembly on this constitutional question. In the opinion 
of your committee, a question like this, involving general 
principles, ought to be settled by the representatives of the 
whole church; and as the Synod of Philadelphia represent 
a large section of the church, whose rights and privileges 
they are bound to defend, they must regard the attempt of 
the protestants, to debar their votes in such a decision, as 
altogether improper and unreasonable. For, suppose two- 
thirds of the Synods in our body stood in the same condi- 
tion as the Synod of Philadelphia, then, according to the 
doctrine of the protestants in this case, a single individual 
in each Synod might, by complaining, throw the settle- 
ment of this constitutional question into the hands of the 
remaining one-third. Would this be right ? The protest- 
ants shrink from the idea of the Synod being ' among their 
judges in the Assembly.' But these protestants were not 
under trial in the Presbytery or Synod, nor are they to be 
under trial in the Assembly, there to be judged. We had 
thought that the Presbytery of Philadelphia had been ar- 
raigned by their brethren at the bar of the Synod for 
adopting a standing rule — that the Presbytery, and not 
their accusers, were the party up for trial. The matter to 
be tried before the Assembly is the standing rule of Pres- 
bytery, to examine persons before receiving them, not the 
brethren who oppose that rule. The second reason of pro- 
test is, that the Book prescribes that, after the roll has been 



232 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

called, the final vote shall be taken. This is true ; and the 
final vote was takefi when the Synod resolved to refer the 
matter to the Assembly. The Synod deviated neither from 
the letter nor the spirit of the Book. The third reason of 
protest is a mere conjecture. The article of the Book of 
Discipline, upon which it is founded, not only proves the 
right of the Synod to refer, but the propriety of such refer- 
ence in this very case. 

"Your committee further remark, that some of the pro- 
testants in this case have violated a rule in the Book of 
Discipline, Chap, viii., Sec. viii. Some of them were 
parties complainant, had no right to vote, and that rule 
says, ' None can join in a protest against a decision in any 
judicatory, excepting those who had a right to vote in said 
decision.' "* 

The above extracts exhibit proof that party feeling ran 
high on both sides, and that on one there was a disposition, 
in the settlement of a simple question of constitutional 
right, — the right of examination, — to give it the character 
of a trial, so as to exclude the commissioners of the largest 
Synod from a vote in deciding that question. 

Dr. Ely and others brought before the Assembly of 1832 
a complaint against the Synod of Philadelphia for not 
dividing the Presbytery of that name, in accordance with 
the request of himself and his friends. They also pre- 
sented a petition to the Assembly, asking that body to 
divide the Presbytery. The one paper complained of the 
Synod for not erecting a new Presbyterv, to be composed 
of twenty-three specified ministers and certain specified 
churches. The other paper asked for the erection of a 
Presbytery of thirteen enumerated ministers and as many 
churches, differing from the list presented to the Synod in 
their petition to it. 

The complaint was taken up in the Assembly, and, after 
a full hearing and a long discussion, the complaint was 



Minutes of Synod, pp. 13, 14. 



ELECTIVE AFFINITY PRESB YTER Y. 



233 



sustained. No censure was passed upon the Synod. This 
result (the sustaining of the complaint) is attributable to 
several causes. First, the votes of all the commissioners 
from the large Synod of Philadelphia were ruled out. 
Second, some members of the Assembly voted to sustain 
from sympathy with the theological views, for the shelter- 
ing of which the new organization was designed. Third, 
some so voted from the hope that, by separating the con- 
tending parties, peace might be restored; whilst others 
considered the recommendation of the last Assembly as a 
compromise measure, which this Assembly was bound to 
carry out. 

Mr. Robert J. Breckenridge moved, that as the judicial 
case was closed by sustaining the complaint, and as the 
petition now before the Assembly was a different one from 
that rejected by the Synod in the act complained of, the 
Commissioners of the Presbyteries of that Synod of Phila- 
delphia be admitted to vote on the petition, as they have 
a right to do. This motion was rejected ; and as often as 
renewed was rejected.* The result of all was, that the As- 
sembly created a new Presbytery, to be called the Second 
Presbytery of Philadelphia, composed of fourteen ministers 
and as many churches. The motion was — 

u Resolved, That the complaint be sustained and the 
prayer of the petitioners be granted, "f 

And yet, in reality, the thing granted by the Assem- 
bly was not that which the petitioners complained against 
the Synod for not granting. The Presbytery thus erected 
within the bounds of the Synod of Philadelphia came to 
be called " The Assembly's Presbytery," and "The Elect- 
ive Affinity Presbytery;" the latter designation having, it 
is said, been suggested by a remark of Dr. Skinner, one 
of its members, during the discussion. 

* Baird's Hist., p. 394. • -f- Minutes Assembly, 1832, pp. 320, 321. 
8* 



234 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

When the Synod met, in Lewistown, in October of that 
year, quite a sharp and protracted contest was occasioned 
by the presentation of a paper, claiming to be for the pur- 
pose of completing the roll, excepting to the act of the 
General Assembly in constituting the Second Presbytery 
of Philadelphia (but recognizing that Presbytery as a con- 
stituent portion of the Synod) ; asserting that the act of the 
Assembly was an infringement of the constitutional rights 
of the Synod ; and proposing to appoint a committee to 
prepare a memorial to the General Assembly, praying them 
to review the proceeding complained of, at their next 
session.* 

The object of presenting this paper, previous to the com- 
pletion of the roll, appears to have been to avoid the recog- 
nition of the constitutionality of the act of the Assembly, 
by admitting the Second Presbytery without protest. The 
introduction of the paper at that juncture was objected 
to as out of order. The Moderator (Mr. Junkin) pro- 
nounced it in order ; an appeal was taken, and the decision 
of the Moderator was sustained. The first resolution in 
the paper, proposing to recognize the Second Presbytery 
of Philadelphia " as a constituent member of this Synod," 
was lost, yeas 29, nays 44, and the rest of the paper was 
postponed for the present, and a Moderator was elected. 

A motion was made to enter the names of Dr. Ely, Rev. 
James Patterson, Rev. Albert Barnes, and Elder Henry 
Neill upon the roll. An amendment was offered in the 
words "as members of the Presbytery of Philadelphia." 
This was postponed to consider a resolution offered by Mr. 
Winchester, to admit these brethren as members of the 
Presbytery of Philadelphia. This was amended by the 
words "if they desire it;" and in that shape passed. 
They did not desire it, as might have been expected ; and 

* Minutes of Synod, p. ^. 



ELECTIVE AFFINITY PRESBYTERY. 



235 



in a respectful note, in reply to the resolution of Synod, 
they declined the condition of their enrollment, and 
claimed their right to sit as members of the Second Pres- 
bytery, under the authority of the General Assembly.* 

At an early moment after the Synod convened, com- 
munications from the Synods of Pittsburg and Cincinnati 
had been presented, read, and referred to a committee. 
These communications contained the action of the said 
Synods, remonstrating against the act of Assembly creating 
the "Elective Affinity Presbytery." The committee to 
which they were referred, reported a series of resolutions 
proposing to join with the other two Synods in remon- 
strating to the next General Assembly against the for- 
mation of the Elective Affinity Presbytery, to appoint a 
committee to draught a remonstrance, and other measures. 

The first two proposals were adopted, a committee 
appointed to draught a memorial, and the other measures 
postponed. A memorial was accordingly prepared (Dr. 
Engles, chairman) representing to the General Assembly 
the views of the Synod, setting forth the constitutional 
and other reasons why the Synod could not recognize a 
Presbytery that had, as they alleged, been erected in vio- 
lation of the constitution of the church, disclosing what 
the Synod supposed to be the unjustifiable considerations 
prompting the New School ministers at Philadelphia to 
seek this erection, and beseeching the Assembly, in the 
most respectful and earnest terms, to reconsider and annul 
the act. 

A protest against the proceedings of the Synod, in this 
business, was presented by fourteen members, and ad- 
mitted to record. Mr. Junkin and Mr. Engles were ap- 
pointed to prepare an answer. The former wrote the 
answer, which, with the protest, is in the Minutes, and is 

* Minutes of Synod, p. 7. 



236 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

a specimen of the author's skill in detecting and exposing 
the weak points of false reasoning.* 

Complaints to the General Assembly were also an- 
nounced ; and thus the conflict went on. Different opin- 
ions may be entertained by dispassionate minds in regard 
to the wisdom, constitutionality, and expediency of the 
acts of the Synod in regard to this matter. To some 
it appeared like nullification, and resistance to superior 
authority. To others it seemed like justifiable opposition 
to a revolutionary movement. Those who entertained high 
notions of the supremacy and unlimited power of the General 
Assembly condemned the act, as savoring of contumacy. 
Those who contended that the powers of the General As- 
sembly are specific and limited by a written constitution, 
and who urged that the ecclesiastical rights of God's people 
are only safe when the limitations of the constitution are 
respected, vindicated the doings cf Synod, as justifiable 
measures for preventing the prostration of that instrument, 
and resisting the usurpation, by the Assembly, of power 
which the constitution conferred exclusively upon the 
Synod. The weak point of the Synod's position, some 
thought, was in the oft-asserted principle, that even an un- 
constitutional law is binding, and ought to be submitted to, 
until it is pronounced unconstitutional by the competent tri- 
bunal ; and many were of opinion that it would have been 
better for the Synod to have acquiesced in acts which they 
deemed unconstitutional, until they could have obtained 
redress, by a reversal of the objectionable acts. But others, 
looking upon the acts of the Assembly as unconstitutional 
and revolutionary, held that the Synod did well, acting upon 
the maxim obsta principiis, to assert their constitutional 
rights, and to "give consent by subjection, no, not for an 
hour," to a usurpation of their own prerogative by the Supe- 

* Minutes of Synod, pp. 10, 11, 12, 13, and 18-22. 



CASE OF REV. GEORGE DUFF I ELD. 



237 



rior Court. Those who took this view of the subject alleged 
that, as there is no court above the Assembly to pronounce 
upon the constitutionality of its legislative or administra- 
tive acts, if those acts are palpably unconstitutional, resist- 
ance becomes a duty. The case was unprecedented, and 
good men on both sides may have erred. 

Before this same Synod came the case of the Rev. 
George Duffield, upon his complaint against the Presbytery 
of Carlisle. The judicial committee reported it as in 
order, and recommended that it be taken up. But it ap- 
pearing that neither the complaint nor the reasons for it 
had been given to the Presbytery or its Moderator within 
the prescribed ten days, it was, on motion of Mr. Junkin, 
resolved, that no complaint was regularly before the Synod. 
But, the Presbytery and Mr. Duffield having signified their 
willingness to proceed, the Synod took up the case. After 
reading the papers and hearing the parties, a motion, made 
by Mr. Junkin and seconded' by Mr. Steel, was adopted, in 
the words following, viz. : 

"WJiereas, The principal complaint of Mr. Duffield 
against the proceedings of the Presbytery of Carlisle, and 
that on which the other two rest, and from which they 
spring, is ' that' without the preferring of charges, citation, 
and other steps of judicial process, the Presbytery have, in 
fact, condemned him as heretical;' and 

" Whereas, The Synod are distinctly informed that the 
Presbytery intend, as soon as practicable, to commence 
and is,sue such process : therefore, 

"Resolved, That further progress in the present complaint 
is unnecessary, if not improper, until the Presbytery shall 
have brought the contemplated trial of Mr. Duffield to 
an issue, which they are hereby enjoined to do as soon as 
possible."* 

This paper was offered at the close of Mr. Duffield's ar- 
gument on his complaint, and before the defence of the 

* Minutes, pp. 13, 14. 



238 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Presbytery was heard ; but, on request, it was withdrawn 
until after the Presbytery was heard, and then adopted. 

Mr. Duffield had written a book entitled "Duffield on 
Regeneration,"^ containing, as the Presbytery alleged, very 
serious errors, kindred to some pertaining to the " New 
Divinity;" and, as in the case of Mr. Barnes, the Presby- 
tery tried the book instead of the man. This, it would 
seem, Mr. Junkin did not esteem the right process of dis- 
cipline, and hence he interposed with this paper. The 
facts are here recorded not only as part of the history of 
the great disruption, but in order to show that before Mr. 
Barnes' book on the Romans was published, and before 
Mr. Junkin could have anticipated that he would ever 
assume the unenviable position of a prosecutor, he was on 
record in favor of regular discipline, by trying not a book, 
but its author. 

It may be proper to add here, in regard to Mr. Duffield's 
case, that his trial before his Presbytery began on the nth 
of April the next year (1833). The charges were ten in 
number. The Presbytery found them all sustained except 
two; and then entered a minute stating that "As Mr. 
Duffield alleges that Presbytery has misinterpreted some of 
his expressions, and says, in fact, that he does hold all the 
doctrines of the Standards, and that he wishes to live in 
amity with his brethren, . . . therefore, 

" Resolved, That Presbytery, at present, do not censure 
him, any further than to warn him to guard against such 
speculations as may impugn the doctrines of our church, 
and that he study to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the 
bond of peace." 

Against- this very gentle decision, Mr. Duffield gave 
notice of appeal to the General Assembly, but he never 
prosecuted it. When the case came before the Synod of 
Philadelphia for review, in October, 1833, the considera- 
tion of it was postponed on account of Mr. Duffield's 



DR. BEECH ER AND LANE SEMINARY. 



239 



absence from illness. Next year it was taken up, and the 
Synod censured the leniency of the Presbytery.* Thus 
ended the case of Mr. Duffield, adding another to the 
many proofs already furnished, in the history of this 
period, that error was spreading, and that, as yet, it had 
not been reached by effective discipline. All .this was pro- 
ducing its effect upon the mind of the subject of this me- 
moir ; and whilst these things were calculated to discourage 
any ordinary mind from making any further attempts to 
arrest the progress of the New Theology, they but con- 
firmed his in the conviction that it was somebody's duty 
to make a more effective effort. 

Meanwhile the struggle went on in the public journals 
and in the various church courts ; other combatants were 
entering the lists from without the church; and thus the 
necessity of conservative efforts became more and more 
apparent. 

Arthur Tappan, Esq., had liberally endowed a Professor- 
ship in Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, and, in 1832, 
nominated the Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, of Boston, to the 
Chair of Theology. Mr. Gillett says : 

"The condition of the endowment was not unaccept- 
able to the prominent men in the Western field. His acces- 
sion to their ranks was hailed with gratulation, and Dr. 
Nelson, of Danville, and Dr. Wilson, of Cincinnati, as 
well as the Princeton Professors, were consulted in the 
matter, and gave expression of their satisfaction with the 
arrangement. Dr. Beecher accepted of the appointment, 
and removed to Cincinnati in September, 1832. On his 
way he transferred his ecclesiastical relations to the Third- 
Presbytery of New York, and by that body was dismissed 
to the Presbytery of Cincinnati. It was a step well calcu- 
lated to excite distrust ; and he had been only a short time 
at his post when his doctrinal views began to excite suspi- 
cion. He was not a man to conceal his sentiments, and 

* Baird's History, p. 467, and Min. of Synod of 1834, pp. 17, 18. 



2 4 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

courted rather than shunned investigation. Dr. Wilson 
became his prosecutor."* 

This trial of Dr. Beecher did not take place till 1835, 
and was almost synchronous with that of Mr. Barnes ; and 
it is here alluded to, in order to show that there was a 
growing apprehension throughout the church that the doc- 
trines of her Standards were being undermined, and the 
means of propagating error increased. Mr. Gillett justly 
says, that the mode of Dr. Beecher' s translation from the 
Congregational Church to the Presbyterian was "well cal- 
culated to excite distrust." It was asked, Why did he not 
go directly to the Presbytery of Cincinnati, in the bounds 
of which he expected to labor? Why apply (in writing, 
too, and not by personal application) to the Third Presby- 
tery of New York, which at that time was considered by 
the Old School as peculiarly zealous for the innovations 
in doctrine and order? And as this thing was done on his 
way West, it seemed entirely unnecessary, upon the hypoth- 
esis that he was what a Professor of Theology in a Presby- 
terian Seminary ought to be. He was credibly reported to 
have said to a distinguished Professor of a college in that 
region, "I have been chosen, and come to make the West 
what New England is, and I can do it. I have pledge of 
co-operation of eminent men; and you must help me." 

No wonder, then, that under these circumstances his 
advent excited apprehension. When admitted to the 
Presbytery of Cincinnati, on certificate from the Third 
Presbytery of New York, the venerable Dr. J. L. Wilson 
offered a protest, which was refused a place on the record. 
Thereupon a motion was made to appoint a committee to 
inquire into the rumors charging Dr. Beecher with doc- 
trinal error. This motion was rejected. A similar one, made 
in April, 1833, was indefinitely postponed. Other causes of 

* Gillett's History, vol. ii. pp. 462, 463. 



DR. BEECHER'S TRIAL. 



241 



delay intervened; until at length, in November, 1834, Dr. 
Wilson tabled charges against Dr. Beecher for unsoundness 
in certain doctrines, for slandering the church of God by- 
attributing these errors to her as her received doctrines, 
and for dissimulation in professing to adopt the Confes- 
sion of Faith, when he did not really believe it. The 
Presbytery, the majority of which were New School, post- 
poned the trial, first from November to April, and then to 
June, 1835. 

"The trial," says Mr. Gillett, "continued for several 
days with unabated interest. But the vindication of Dr. 
Beecher was so complete that, by a vote of nearly two to 
one, it was resolved that the charges be not sustained. Dr. 
Wilson appealed to the Synod. Here the case was gone 
over anew, and again he was defeated. From the decision 
of the Synod he appealed to the Assembly of 1836; but, 
on learning of the facts in regard to another case, which 
was to come before that body, in which the same principles 
were involved, he asked and obtained leave to withdraw 
his appeal."* 

Mr. Gillett appears not to have had access to the Minutes 
of the Synod, nor to have been informed of the process 
of trial before that body, or he would not have so curtly 
recorded as a fact that Dr. Wilson "was again defeated." 
The historical verity is, that Dr. Beecher made such state- 
ments and explanations as went far to satisfy the majority 
of Synod, and even Dr. Wilson himself, that he was not so 
far astray as had been feared. And yet, so far from being 
"defeated," Dr. Wilson's appeal was sustained, because 
there was no reason to censure him; and "Because, 



* Gillett's History, vol. ii. p. 465. In a note at the bottom of that page, 
signed " F.," it is stated, " The real fact was, some rogue on the boat on the 
Ohio River stole the Doctor's coat, money, and papers in the case of Dr. 
Beecher ; and he was glad of any excuse for dropping the matter." Who 
" F." is, or whence his information, I do not know; but I have means of 
knowing that the insinuation does injustice to Dr. Wilson. 
21 



2 42 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

although the charges of hypocrisy and slander are not 
proved ; and although Synod see nothing in his views, as 
explained by himself, to justify any suspicion of unsoundness 
in the faith ; yet, on the subject of the depraved nature of 
man, and total depravity, and the work of the Holy Spirit 
in effectual calling, and the subject of ability, they are of 
opinion that Dr. Beecher has indulged in a disposition to 
philosophize, instead of exhibiting in simplicity and plain- 
ness, the doctrines taught in the Scriptures; and has 
employed terms, and phrases, and modes of illustration, 
calculated to convey ideas inconsistent with the word of 
God and our Confession of Faith ; and that he ought to be, 
and hereby is admonished to be, more guarded in future." 

Dr. Beecher acquiesced in this decision ; and the Synod 
advised him to publish "as early as possible, in pamphlet 
form, a concise statement of the argument and design of 
his sermon on native ability, and of his views of total 
depravity, original sin, and regeneration, agreeably to his 
declarations and explanations made before Synod." This 
Dr. Beecher did, in a pamphlet as large as a small volume, 
and which was received as substantially sound. 

Now, the only aim of Dr. Wilson was to preserve the 
purity of the church in regard to doctrine ; and when the 
Synod declared that they had just grounds of apprehension 
in regard to Dr. Beecher, and "admonished" the latter, 
and Dr. Beecher accepted the admonition, promised to do 
better, and actually did publish a correction of his "terms, 
and phrases, and modes of illustration, calculated to convey 
ideas inconsistent with the word of God and our Confes- 
sion of Faith," it seems to us that, so far from being 
' ' defeated, ' ' Dr. Wilson substantially gained his cause. The 
real cause of his withdrawal of the appeal, Mr. Gillett 
truly states in his text, viz., the fact that the case of Mr. 
Barnes involved the same principles. 

The history of this case, in all its stages, clearly proves 



LENITY OF THE COURTS. 243 

that, whilst the great majority of the ministers and elders 
were sound in the faith, there was a marked reluctance to 
administer discipline upon individuals, and a disposition to 
accept of any explanations that would, in the judgment of 
charity, relieve them from censure. So far from exhibiting 
a spirit of severity and persecution, the courts leaned to 
the opposite extreme, and exercised great lenity. All this 
but postponed a crisis which the tendency of things ren- 
dered inevitable. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Assembly of 1833 — Beman's Secret Circular — Philadelphia Difficulties — 
Committee of Compromise — Refusal to hear the Synod — Compromise all 
on One Side — Action of Synod of Philadelphia of 1833 — Second Presbytery 
nullifies — Assembly of 1834 erects an Elective Affinity Synod, named 
Wilmington — Protests and Answers — Western Memorial, its Origin and 
Objects — Its Treatment by the Assembly — Action in regard to it — Pro- 
test against said Action — Meeting of Old School Men — Act and Testi- 
mony — Its History and Contents — Its Reception by Different Parties, and 
Opposition to it — Position of Princeton— Gillett's Characteristics of it — 
Its Defenders — Dr. A. Alexander's Views — Results. 

IN the Synod 1 of Philadelphia of 1832, Mr. Junkin had 
been appointed chairman of a committee to defend the 
Synod in the following General Assembly, against the ap- 
peal of the Rev. George Duffield. Messrs. Kennedy, Potts, 
J. Williamson, and McCalla were members of the commit- 
tee. He was also a member of the committee, of which 
Mr. McCalla was head, to defend the decision of the Synod 
in the case of the Second (Affinity) Presbytery of Phila- 
delphia. Mr. Duffield's appeal was never prosecuted, and 
the General Assembly of 1833 managed to exclude the 
Synod from a hearing in the latter case, and did not even 
consult the committee privately; although, as we shall see, 
the action of the Assembly was professedly based, in part, 
upon an alleged consultation with thirty-one members of 
the Synod at an interview sought by the Assembly's com- 
mittee.* 

As the combat deepened, numbers became of importance 
to both parties in the General Assembly, and, no doubt, 
both, to some extent, used means for obtaining a majority 

* Baird's History, p. 397 ; Min. Assembly, 1833. 
(244) 



"MIDDLE MEN" AND "PEACE MEN." 245 

of their friends. On the New School side a printed circu- 
lar letter was quietly issued, and sent to parties supposed 
to be worth)' of confidence, over the signature of Dr. N. 
S. S. Beman. This contained, among other things, the 
following requests : 

"Will you look well to the Commissioners who attend 
the next General Assembly ? Observe the following par- 
ticulars : 1. Be sure to elect your full number, both lay and 
clerical. 2. Let them be peace and union men, men who 
will take correct ground in relation to those movements 
which are intended to excite jealousies and divisions in the 
Presbyterian Church. 3. Be sure and have all the com- 
missioners attend. 4. Insist on their being present in 
Philadelphia at least a day before the Assembly opens. 5. 
Request them to attend and report their names at the lec- 
ture-room of Dr. Skinner's church, in Arch Street, on 
Wednesday, the 15th of May, at half-past seven o'clock. 
Affectionately yours, 

"N. S. S. Beman."* 

When, two years later, the Old School publicly called 
a Convention of their friends, before the meeting of the 
Assembly of Pittsburg, the measure was denounced as un- 
presbyterial and unjustifiable ; and yet the proposed meet- 
ing in Dr. Skinner's church was but the prototype of the 
Convention. Thus rallied, the Assembly of 1833 was com- 
posed of commissioners, a majority of whom were in favor 
of further compromise measures. That majority was not 
entirely made up of New School men, but of them and 
of those called at the time "Middle men" and "Peace 
men." 

The latter were sound in the faith, but disposed, as long 
and as far as possible, to avoid a resort to measures of 
reform which might be considered extreme. 

The General Assembly appointed a "Committee of 



* Presbyterian, 1833, pp. 63, 70. 



246 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Compromise," with instructions "to endeavor to effect a 
compromise, if practicable, between the parties concerned" 
in the Philadelphia cases. To this Committee the papers 
and parties were referred. But, instead of hearing the 
parties, or allowing them to be heard before the Assem- 
bly, this Committee called a meeting of such members of 
the Synod of Philadelphia as were in the city, a majority 
of whom happened to be of the New School. They did 
not give the Committee of Synod an audience, nor, so far 
as is known, consult their wishes. They voted that it was 
best to suppress all papers, and leave matters as they then 
were. They reported that they had had an interview with 
several members of the Second Presbytery of Philadel- 
phia, and subsequently with thirty-one members of the 
Synod of Philadelphia, assembled at the request of the 
Committee ; that, after a free conference with both parties, 
the Committee are enabled to recommend to 
the Assembly the following resolution, viz. : 

"Resolved, That the complainants in these cases have 
leave to withdraw their complaints, and that the consider- 
ation of all other papers relating to the Second Presbytery 
be indefinitely postponed." 

Thus, by an indirection, and without hearing the com- 
plaints against the Synod of Philadelphia, or the Synod's 
Committee in defence of her acts, the Assembly, in effect, 
sustained the complaints, disregarded the expressed wishes 
of that Synod and the Synods of Pittsburg and Cincin- 
nati, and perpetuated the Elective Affinity Presbytery. 
The Committee appointed to defend the action of Synod 
sent in at once a remonstrance against the course pur- 
sued, and claimed their right to be heard. Efforts were 
made to induce them to withdraw this paper, but the 
Committee of the Synod refused to do it, and it was con- 
signed to a convenient grave in the Committee of Bills 
and Overtures. 



SECOND PRESBYTERY NULLIFIES. 



247 



At the meeting of the Synod of Philadelphia in the 
ensuing October, held in Columbia, Mr. McCalla, as Chair- 
man of the Committee to defend the Synod against the 
complaints in the case of the Second Presbytery, made 
report of the result in the General Assembly. Mr. Gilbert 
moved the recognition, by the Synod, of the Second Pres- 
bytery, and the rescinding of all former acts of the Synod 
inconsistent therewith. Mr. Engles moved a substitute, 
which recited, in a preamble, the history of the case ; and 
then, in a series of resolutions, which, first reprobating the 
acts of the General Assembly in erecting and continuing the 
Presbytery as unconstitutional, and tending to prostrate dis- 
cipline, recognized the Presbytery (Second) as a constituent 
element of Synod, united it to the First Presbytery, and then 
divided the Presbytery thus united, into two, by a line ex- 
tending through Market Street.* This was proposed to be 
done by the unquestioned constitutional right of a Synod 
to unite and divide Presbyteries. Dr. Green proposed an- 
other paper, embodying substantially the same principles, 
yet proposing to treat the Elective Affinity Presbytery as a 
nullity, and refusing to admit its members as members of 
Synod unless they would consider and treat the so-called 
Presbytery as a nullity. After considerable discussion, the 
Synod refused to postpone Mr. Engles' paper, and, after 
an amendment, running the line up the Schuylkill from 
the west end of Market Street, it was adopted. f 

The Second Presbytery nullified this action of the Synod, 
and continued its meetings and business. Appeal and com- 
plaint against the action of Synod were carried up, and 
the war about Elective Affinity courts went on. 

The Assembly of 1834, constituted much as its imme- 
diate predecessor had been, as regards parties, sustained the 
complaints against the Synod ; and not only reversed the 

* Min. Synod, pp. 6, 7. f Ibid., pp. 7, II. 



248 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

act of Synod by which the two Philadelphia Presbyteries 
were united, but pronounced it to be void, whilst they at 
the same time recognized that pai-t of the same actioja by 
which the (Old) Presbytery had been divided to be valid, 
and continued that division.* By this action, the Assem- 
bly not only, as the Old School alleged, usurped the pre- 
rogative of the Synod, but, after creating a Presbytery 
against the will of the Synod, and forcing it into the 
Synod, at the same time made it independent of the Synod, 
in contravention of the powers explicitly guaranteed to 
Synods by the constitution. 

But, not contented with this action, the General Assem- 
bly proceeded to insure the life of the Elective Affinity 
Presbytery, against the power of the Synod of Philadel- 
phia, by erecting a new Synod for its protection. 

The Synod had very recently erected the Presbytery of 
Wilmington out of that of New Castle, and there was a 
small Presbytery, named Lewes, in the State of Delaware. 
Majorities in both these Presbyteries sympathized with the 
Second Presbytery of Philadelphia (Assembly's), and out of 
these three the Synod of Delaware was erected. f Thus 
was there not only a Presbytery without fixed geographical 
limits, but a Synod also, presenting the anomalous condi- 
tion of an imperium in imperio. It was in the course of the 
discussions upon the subject of the Elective Affinity Presby- 
tery, that the venerable and excellent Rev. James Patter- 
son, with a frankness which his more wary brethren scarcely 
relished at the time, argued that there was a necessity for 
such a Presbytery for the convenience of licensing, ordain- 
ing, and admitting to the ministry men who could not so 
fully adopt the Confession as the old Presbytery and the 
old Synod required them to do. 

Against the acts of the Assembly, based upon the " elect - 

* Min. Assembly, 1834, p. 17. f Ibid., p. 37. 



INTENSE FEELING OF ALARM. 



249 



ive affinity principle," and usurping the powers of Synod, 
the voting minority solemnly protested. The Commis- 
sioners of the Synod, having been excluded from a vote, 
could not join in this protest. The protestants assigned 
as reasons for their opposition: 1. The unconstitutionality 
of the acts, being in contravention of powers exclusively 
belonging to Synods. 2. That the elective affinity prin- 
ciple of constituting church courts was subversive of all 
discipline. The majority replied to their arguments by as- 
serting : 1. The supreme power of the Assembly to do such 
acts, under the clause giving that body power to "decide 
in all controversies respecting doctrine and discipline, and 
to issue all appeals and references brought before them 
from the inferior judicatories." 2. From precedents in 
which, in extraordinary occasions, the Assembly had exer- 
cised the right of organizing Presbyteries. [These were be- 
yond the bounds of any Synod, or where the territory 
comprised in the new Presbytery belonged to two Synods.] 
3. That the Assembly was the only judge of constitutional 
law. 4. They cited the precedents in the city of New 
York, where geographical boundaries had not been re- 
garded in the construction of Presbyteries.* 

The proceedings of the General Assembly, resulting in 
the erection of an elective affinity Synod, to protect, as 
the Old School alleged, the elective affinity Presbytery, 
aroused the intensest feeling of alarm among the friends 
of strict constitutional construction. They thought they 
saw, in these measures, a deliberate purpose to prostrate 
the discipline of the church, and open the doors for 
the influx of error in doctrine and order. They beheld 
the" Supreme Judicatory of the Church discouraging ef- 
forts to resist the spread of error, and opening, as they 



* Min. Assembly, pp. 657, 658. 



25 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

verily believed, doors of entrance for ministers hostile to 
our system. 

With Presbyteries pledged to admit intrants with clean 
papers, without examination, with a Synod to sanction 
the acts of these Presbyteries, and with the right of 
other Presbyteries to examine intrants and refuse admis- 
sion, if they had regular credentials, denied ; they deemed 
the facilities for flooding the church with unsound teach- 
ing wellnigh complete. They felt that a crisis had come, 
demanding extraordinary efforts to avert these dangers.* 

Another part of the proceedings of this Assembly which 
tended to arouse the conservative elements of the church to 
vigorous action, was their treatment of an overture which 
has usually been designated as " The Western Memorial." 
The acts of the Assemblies of 1832 and 1833 had forced 
upon many of the most sound and godly men in the church 
a conviction that a revolution was in progress, which, if 
not arrested, would change the entire system of doctrine 
and order which she had so long and so firmly maintained. 
Conferences were held by ministers and elders, accom- 
panied by much prayer, and a spirit of earnest, solemn re- 
sistance to the innovations was awakened. In one of these 
the "Western Memorial" originated. The first meeting 
was held at the house of Elder John Montfort, in Monroe 
Township, Butler County, Ohio. There were eleven min- 
isters and ten ruling elders present. The Rev. Francis Mont- 
fort was Moderator, and the Revs. Sayers Gazlay and John 
L. Belville, clerks. Much time was spent in earnest prayer 
for Divine direction. Letters from Drs. Green, Wilson, 
and others were read. The evils which they deplored 

* They honestly thought that the Presbytery (Assembly's) and the Synod 
of Delaware were erected to shield the errors attributed to Mr. Barnes, and 
to facilitate the influx of teachers of the New Theology. This design could 
not be attributed to all who voted for these measures, although to most it 
probably might. 



WESTERN MEMORIAL. 251 

were made subjects of conversation, and a Committee ap- 
pointed to embody the thoughts and suggestions expressed 
by the members in a memorial to the General Assembly. 
The paper was submitted to the Conference during the 
next sessions of the Synod of Cincinnati.* 

The memorial was a long and very able paper, too long 
to transfer to these pages. It can be found at length in 
the Assembly's Digest. f It set forth, in grave, dignified, 
and decisive, but respectful, terms, the evils by which the 
memorialists believed the church to be distracted and 
endangered ; and enumerated certain acts of previous 
General Assemblies, which tended, as the memorialists 
thought, to perpetuate and increase these evils. 

"These evils," they say, "have greatly disturbed the 
peace of our Zion, paralyzed its strength, and exposed it to 
reproach. And notwithstanding the efforts which have been 
made to arrest their progress, nothing satisfactory has been 

accomplished Plainly as the path is marked out 

in our excellent constitution, it is with grief that we feel 
constrained to say that for some years past a policy of an 
evasive character has distinguished many of the proceed- 
ings of the General Assemblies, as also a number of inferior 
judicatories, wherein they have, apparently at least, sought 
to avoid a prompt discharge of their constitutional duties, 
and have substituted a course of procedure unknown and 
repugnant to the prescribed order of our form of govern- 
ment. Although this has been applauded as a policy 
wisely calculated to prevent evils and preserve peace, yet 
we are compelled to view it in a different light ; and 
as indicating that there is a widely spread principle of 
evil operating in the Presbyterian Church, to the general 
change of its form of government and the character of its 
creed. We feel alarmed at the evidences which press upon 
us of the prevalence of unsoundness in doctrine and laxity 
in discipline; and we view it as an aggravating considera- 
tion, that the General Assembly, the constitutional guardian 

* Baird's Hist., pp. 406-408. f Digest, 659-668. 



2S 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

of the church's purity, even when a knowledge of such 
evils has been brought before it in an orderly manner, has, 
within a few years past, either directly or indirectly, refused 
to apply the constitutional remedy." 

They then proceed to enumerate certain evils, and the 
sources of these evils. The Plan of Union of 1801 ; 
the custom of permitting candidates or intrants to adopt 
the Standards with a reservation of the right to put 
their own construction upon them ; the ordination of 
men sine titulo, by Presbyteries in the East, to be sent to 
labor in the bounds of other Presbyteries. This last they 
allege to have been done in many cases for the purpose 
of introducing into our ministry men of inferior attain- 
ments or of unsound creed, and they specify cases where 
six, eight, and ten young men, just licensed, had been so 
ordained, and who, after being "suddenly, nominally, and 
geographically converted into Presbyterian ministers," had 
been thus sent forth. A fourth grievance was the opera- 
tion of voluntary and irresponsible missionary associations 
within our church. They remonstrate against the erection 
of elective affinity courts ; and, in the last place, they testify 
against nine enumerated errors in doctrine which they 
allege to be taught in the writings of Beman, Duffield, 
Barnes, and Beecher. They close their memorial with 
an earnest plea for redress of these grievances in a con- 
stitutional way. 

As the innovating party, aided by the "middle men," 
had a controlling majority in this Assembly, this paper 
was treated in a way accordant with the wishes of that 
majority. When reported by the Committee of Bills and 
Overtures, it was put upon the docket without being read. 
There it remained until the ninth day of the session. Then 
it was referred to a special committee. That committee 
reported after three days; and as this report indicates the 
animus of the majority, and contains a demand for and a 



RESOLUTIONS RECOMMENDED. 



253 



vindication of this course subsequently pursued by Dr. 
Junkin, it is here inserted. 

After the usual formulary of a report, and the statement 
that the memorial had been adopted by about nine Pres- 
byteries and signed by eighteen ministers and ninety-nine 
elders, they recommend the adoption of the following 
Resolutions : 

" 1. That this Assembly cannot sanction the censure 
contained in the memorial, against the proceedings and 
measures of former General Assemblies. 

"2. That it is deemed inexpedient and undesirable to 
abrogate or interfere with the Plan of Union . . . adopted 
in 1801. 

"3. That the previous action of the present Assembly 
on the subject of ordaining men, is deemed sufficient. 

" 4. That the duty of licensing and ordaining men to 
the office of the gospel ministry, and of guarding that 
office against the intrusion of men who are unqualified to 
discharge its solemn and responsible duties, or who are 
unsound in the faith, is committed to the Presbyteries. 
And should any already in that office be known to be 
fundamentally erroneous in doctrine, it is not only the 
privilege, but the duty, of Presbyteries constitutionally to 
arraign and depose them. 

"5. That this Assembly bears solemn testimony against 
publishing to the world ministers in good and regular 
standing, as heretical or dangerous, without having been 
constitutionally tried and condemned, thereby greatly 
hindering their usefulness as ministers of Jesus Christ. 
Our excellent constitution makes ample provision for re- 
dressing all such grievances; and this Assembly enjoins, 
in all cases, a faithful compliance, in meekness and broth- 
erly love, with its requisitions ; having at all times a 
sound regard to the purity, peace, and prosperity of the 
church. 

"6. That this Assembly have no authority to establish 
any exclusive mode of conducting missions ; but while this 
matter is left to the discretion of individuals and inferior 
judicatories, we would recommend and solicit their willing 
and efficient co-operation with the Assembly's Board. 



2 5 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

•'7. That a due regard to the order of the church and 
the bonds of brotherhood require, in the opinion of this 
Assembly, that ministers, dismissed in good standing by 
sister Presbyteries, should be received by the Presbyteries 
which they are dismissed to join upon the credit of their 
constitutional testimonials, unless they shall have forfeited 
their good standing subsequently to their dismissal. 

"8. That, in the opinion of this Assembly, to take up, 
and try, and condemn any printed publications as heretical 
and dangerous, is equivalent to condemning the author as 
heretical ; that to condemn heresy in the abstract cannot 
be understood as the purpose of such trial ; that the results 
of such trial are to bear upon and seriously affect the stand- 
ing of the author ; and that the fair mode of procedure is, 
if the author be alive and known to be of our communion, 
to institute process against him, and give him a fair and 
constitutional trial. 

"g. That, in receiving and adopting the formularies of 
our church, every person ought to be supposed, without 
evidence to the contrary, to receive and adopt them accord- 
ing to the obvious, known, and established meaning of the 
terms, as the confession of his faith ; and that if objections 
be made, the Presbytery, unless he withdraw such objections, 
should not license, ordain, or admit him. 

" 10. That, in the judgment of this Assembly, it is expe- 
dient that Presbyteries and Synods, in the spirit of charity 
and forbearance, adjust and settle, as far as practicable, all 
their matters of grievance and disquietude without bring- 
ing them before the General Assembly and the world ; as, 
in many cases, this tends to aggravate and continue them, 
and to spread them over the whole church, to the great 
grief of its members, and injury of the cause of religion." 
(Minutes, 1834, pp. 25, 26.) 

Against this action an earnest protest was entered by Dr. 
Ashbel Green, and thirty-five others. The reasons for 
protest were : 

1. On account of the manner in which the memorial 
had been treated, in bringing it before the Assembly. The 
delay. The committing it to a committee hostile to its 
objects, who brought in a report opposed to nearly all the 



PROTEST OF ASHBEL GREEN. 255 

memorialists asked, and that without allowing the memorial 
to be read and to speak for itself. 

2. On account of the claim of infallibility for the Gen- 
eral A-ssembly, and the censure inflicted upon the memo- 
rialists, in the first resolution of the report, for having 
called in question the wisdom of certain decisions of former 
Assemblies. 

3. They protest against the proposal, in the second reso- 
lution, to render the Plan of Union permanent, together 
with all the evils that have grown out of that plan. The 
plan itself they pronounce unconstitutional. 

4. They protest against the fifth resolution, as interfering 
with the liberty of speech, the liberty of the press, and 
with Christian duty. It would shut the mouths of God's 
ministers and people as witnesses for the truth, and estop 
all remonstrance and protest against error. 

5. They protest against the seventh resolution, as denying 
the right of Presbyteries to examine and judge of the quali- 
fications of their own members, or of those seeking to 
become members, and as opening doors for the unrestrained 
entrance of error and errorists. They claim the right of 
examination, as a right inherent in every Presbytery, and 
protest against this attempt, by the General Assembly, to 
sweep that right away, and thus subvert all Presbyterial 
order and government. 

6. They protest against the eighth resolution, because it 
does the very thing which the Assembly censures the me- 
morialists for doing, reflecting upon former General Assem- 
blies for examining and condemning a heretical book 
before the author was tried. This had been done by the 
Assembly of 1810, in the case of Rev. W. C. Davis; and 
by that of 1798, in case of Mr. Balch. This eighth reso- 
lution, they alleged, tended to destroy the mission of the 
church as a testifying body, and to give license to the 
propagation of error if published in books. They alluded 



2 5 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

to some other points to which they objected, and closed their 
protest with the following earnest plea : 

"We do, therefore, by the offering of this protest, most 
solemnly and earnestly beseech the Assembly to pause ; to 
consider the probable consequences of their action on this 
memorial, and yet to retrace their steps ; lest the adherents 
to the Standards of our church, in their plain and obvious 
meaning, should find themselves constrained, however re- 
luctantly, to resort to first principles, and make their final 
appeal to the great Head of the Church." (Minutes, 1834, 
P- 33-) 

The acts of this Assembly in regard to all the great 
issues that troubled the church, especially those in regard 
to elective affinity courts, and to the Western memorial, 
did more to awaken the church to a sense of her danger 
than all that had occurred before. The conservative men 
saw, or thought they saw, in the acts of this Assembly full 
proof of what they had long feared did exist, — a determi- 
nation to effect radical changes, both in the doctrinal creed 
and the ecclesiastical order of their beloved church. They 
saw every effort to obtain a condemnation of doctrines 
which they believed to be fundamentally erroneous, de- 
feated. They saw men and opinions, their fathers would 
have promptly visited with censure, not only tolerated, 
but peculiarly honored, in the church. They saw the 
doors flung wide open for the influx of error, by the 
denial of the right to examine intrants, and by an order 
from the supreme court of the church to receive men upon 
the mere basis of credentials. They saw Presbyteries and 
a Synod organized for the very purpose, as they verily 
believed, of sheltering error, and giving credentials to 
men who were not sound in the faith. They saw a power- 
ful and wealthy Society, which acknowledged no responsi- 
bility to the church courts, standing at her very gates, ready 
to send throughout the entire length and breadth of the 



ACT AND TESTIMONY. 



257 



church the men to whom these "liberal" Presbyteries 
would give credentials. And they saw that, by virtue of 
the hold which that Society had upon these men, who were 
supported by its bounty, the shrewd and talented Actuaries 
of that Society could rally to the General Assembly, and to 
many of the inferior judicatories, these zealous dependents, 
to vote the wishes of these denizen leaders. Many excel - 
lent brethren were slow to be convinced. that men, bearing 
the Christian name, would do such things, and claim to do 
them in the name of the Lord. But when, by the action 
of this Assembly of 1834, the system of innovation was 
rendered so complete, and the plan so fully developed and 
put in working order, even the "middle men" were con- 
strained to confess that things wore an alarming aspect. 

During the sessions of the Assembly, a meeting of min- 
isters and elders was held, on the 26th of May, for the 
purpose of deliberating on the best method of meeting this 
alarming crisis. The Rev. William Wylie presided, and 
Rev. D. R. Preston acted as clerk. After earnest prayer, 
and a free interchange of views, two committees were ap- 
pointed ; one to prepare a protest against the act of the 
Assembly in the matter of elective affinity courts, the other 
to draft an Act and Testimony to the churches on the pres- 
ent crisis. Of the former committee, Rev. Isaac V. Brown, 
of N. J., was Chairman, and of the latter, Dr. R. J. 
Breckenridge. 

The first committee prepared the protest noticed above ; 
the other prepared the Act and Testimony, a paper that has 
become historic in our church, having, perhaps, more than 
any other belonging to the great struggle, won the loyal 
adherence of its friends, and provoked the bitter criticism 
and opposition of its foes. It was understood to have pro- 
ceeded from the pen of that master of vigorous thought 
and intense and lucid English, Dr. Robert J. Breckenridge. 
He consulted Dr. Charles Hodge in reference to the doc- 



258 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

trinal statements it contained ; and it was understood that, 
with one exception, the errors enumerated were defined by 
that eminent Theologian. The paper was reported to a 
meeting of the conference, held on the 28th of May. It 
was then referred to a new committee, who made some 
slight modifications, which were approved, when it was 
adopted and signed. Thirty-seven ministers and twenty- 
seven elders originally signed this document, but, as it 
made provision for receiving signatures throughout the 
church, it was ultimately signed by three hundred and 
seventy-four ministers, seventeen hundred and eighty-nine 
elders, and fourteen licentiates. It was also adopted by 
five Synods and thirty Presbyteries. Dr. Junkin's name 
appears the last on the list of ministers of its original signers, 
as printed in the Assembly's Digest.* 

This remarkable paper can be seen at length in the As- 
sembly's Digest, and we can place on record here but a 
brief syllabus. 

After a grave and sedate, but affecting, introduction, ap- 
pealing to the people and office-bearers of the church, the 
paper sets forth the dangers that threaten her, and the utter 
failure of the measures heretofore employed to avert those 
dangers ; complains that the supreme judicatory had con- 
nived at and countenanced alarming errors ; and then ex- 
claims : 

" Whither, then, can we look for relief but first to Him 
who is Head over all things, to the church, which is his 
body, and then to you, as constituting a part of that body, 
and as instruments in his hand to deliver the church from 
the oppression which she sorely feels? 

" We love the Presbyterian Church, and look back, with 
sacred joy, to her instrumentality in promoting every good 
and every noble cause among men. . . . We delight 
to dwell on the things which our God hath wrought by her ; 

* Digest, p, 677. 



ACT AND TESTIMONY. 



259 



and, by his grace enabling us, we are resolved that our chil- 
dren shall not have occasion to weep over an unfaithfulness 
which permitted us to stand idly by and behold the ruin of 
this glorious structure." 

The paper and its signers then proceed to bear tes- 
timony — 

1. Against the right of interpreting the Standards of the 
church in a sense different from that which had been always 
received, and according to every man's will. 

2. Against the unchristian subterfuge to which many had 
recourse, of avowing adherence to the Standards as a 
system, and yet denying doctrines that are essential to it. 

3. Against the conduct of those in our communion who 
hold, and preach, and publish Armenian and Pelagian here- 
sies, pretending that they are consistent with our creed. 

4. Against the conduct of those who, professing to adopt 
our doctrine and order, so preach and publish as to bring 
both into disrepute. 

5. Against the following, as part of the errors which are 
held and taught by many in our church : 

1. Errors in regard to our relation to Adam. 2. On the 
subject of native depravity. 3. On the subject of Impu- 
tation. 4. Ability. 5. Regeneration. 6. Divine influ- 
ence in the work of grace ; and 7. Errors on the Atone- 
ment, viz., the denial of the true and proper vicarious 
nature of Christ's sufferings. 

The paper then sets forth, that the propagation of these 
errors in doctrine had broken up the peace and unity of 
the church, arrayed its members and ministers into parties, 
and increased the causes of mutual alienation. It recapit- 
ulates the efforts made for reform, and the manner of their 
defeat, and gives a list of grievances, including those 
inflicted by the last Assembly. It then points out the de- 
partures from, and the innovations upon, church order, of 
which they complain, and against which they bear testi- 



2 6o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

mony; and finally recommends a series of measures for 
redress of grievances, and the restoration of the church to 
her former condition of peace and prosperity in the truth. 
Of these there were eight, the last being the recommenda- 
tion of a Convention to be held, on the second Thursday 
of May, 1835, in the city of Pittsburg, "to deliberate and 
consult on the present state of our church, and to adopt 
such measures as may be best suited to restore her prostrate 
standards." The paper closes with the following impressive 
words : 

"And now, Brethren, our whole heart is laid open to 
you and to the world. If the majority of our church are 
against us, they will, we suppose, in the end, either see the 
infatuation of their course, and retrace their steps, or they 
will at last attempt to cut us off. If the former, we shall 
bless the God of Jacob ; if the latter, we are ready, for the 
sake of Christ, and in support of the testimony now made, 
not only to be cut off, but, if need be, to die also. If, on 
the other hand, the body be yet in the main sound, as we 
would fondly hope, we have here, frankly, openly, and 
candidly, laid before our erring brethren the course we are, 
by the grace of God, irrevocably determined to pursue. 
It is our steadfast aim to reform the church, or to testify 
against its errors and defections, until testimony will be no 
longer heard. And we commit the issue into the hands of 
Him who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." 

There was a solemn earnestness in the tone of this 
paper, and in the men who signed it, that sent home to all 
hearts the conviction that they meant work, prayer, and 
counsel. It startled all parties in the church. A committee 
was appointed to publish and circulate it, and it soon began 
to produce various effects upon the Presbyterian public, 
such as might have been expected from the state of parties 
in the church. By the New School it was hailed with 
utterances of derision and displeasure, not without symp- 
toms of dread of its probable results. By those who had 
stood for the order and doctrine of the church, amid accu- 



"THE BIBLICAL REPERTORY:' 2 6l 

mulated discouragements, it was received as a harbinger 
of good. And it was the means of deciding many sound 
and good people, who clung to the hope that matters 
were not so bad as some imagined. Many of the " middle 
men" were at last convinced that serious dangers threat- 
ened the church, and that prompt efforts to avert them 
ought to be inaugurated. But others of that party were 
much excited in an opposite direction, and waged, upon 
the Act and Testimony and its friends, a war that cer- 
tainly was not expected from men whose soundness in the 
faith, and love to our Zion, were so unquestioned. The 
Biblical Repertory, the learned and able Quarterly that 
was the exponent of the Theology and Polity of Princeton, 
bore down upon it with such heavy assaults as its gifted 
writers knew so well how to make. 

A feeling of deep regret pervaded the Old School men 
who favored the Act and Testimony, produced by the 
very decided manner in which the Repertory spoke in 
reprobation of that document. The Presbytery of Newton, 
in the Synod of New Jersey, adopted the following minute 
in reference thereto : 

"In view of the peculiar situation of our church, and 
of the importance of combined and systematic effort to 
rescue her from the dangers incident to this crisis, 

"Resolved, That a committee be appointed to confer, by 
letter or otherwise, with the Professors of the Theological 
Seminary at Princeton, in order to give and receive such 
information, concerning the Act and Testimony, as may 
at once disabuse us of the odium thrown upon us and the 
other signers of that instrument, in a publication which it 
is said emanated from that Seminary, and also may operate 
in uniting their sentiments and ours, so as to produce, if 
possible, a concert of action." 

Dr. Junkin, Mr. Gray, and Mr. Campbell were ap- 
pointed this committee. 

In pursuance of this appointment, a letter, dated Feb. 
28th, 1835, was addressed by this committee to the Rev. 



262 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Drs. Alexander, Miller, and Hodge. It was a long letter, 
couched in very deferential terms, and characterized by a 
fraternal spirit. Neither of the brethren composing the 
committee had suggested the measure, for, in the first sen- 
tence of the letter, they say, " Dear brethren, without any 
original movement of our own upon the subject, we were 
appointed, by the Presbytery of Newton, and directed to 
correspond with you, and endeavor to remove a miscon- 
ception, which is likely to prevent that harmonious action 
which our common principles seemed to guarantee and re- 
quire. Having been early, and warm, and constant friends 
of that measure, we feel distressed that a very slight mis- 
understanding of the 'Act and Testimony' should not only 
prevent your harmonious and efficient co-operation with 
that instrument and its friends, but has caused you to 
throw a preponderating influence against it, and thus to 
aid in defeating a measure which we had fondly hoped 
would have wrought deliverance in Israel." The letter 
then proceeds to explain the designs of the signers, and to 
point out wherein Princeton had misapprehended the true 
meaning and object of that paper, and of the convention 
it proposed. It reminded them that one of themselves 
had, in 1831, attended a conference, similar to that pro- 
posed in the Act and Testimony, and there was nothing 
to be dreaded in a consultation of wise and good men. 
And it met, with facts and arguments, the objections 
against that document which had appeared in the Repertory. 
We allude to this unfortunate diversity of opinion be- 
tween prominent men in the Old School ranks, in regard 
to the best method of averting the dangers that threatened 
the church, not for the purpose of animadverting upon the 
facts, nor of blaming either side. The facts are recorded 
as part of the history of the period necessary to be known, 
in order to a just estimate of the difficulties which the 
friends of reform had to encounter. And it would be but 



POSITION OF THE MIDDLE MEN. 



263 



just to add, that the position assumed, for a time, by 
Princeton and the orthodox middle men, can be accounted 
for upon principles not only entirely compatible with their 
thorough soundness and loyalty to the church, but such as 
might have been expected to influence men situated as they 
were. Professors in Colleges and Seminaries, who go rarely 
abroad among the chuiches, who spend much time in their 
studies, who have little experience of the sterner details 
of pastoral life, and who are more familiar with the theory 
of government and discipline than with its practical work- 
ing, can hardly be expected to realize, as other ministers 
do, the evils which errors in doctrine and discipline pro- 
duce in the congregations. Besides this, their position in 
public institutions, in which all parties in the church may 
claim an interest, seems to suggest the propriety of their 
doing what they can, and all they can, as peace-makers. 
Nor is it to be expected that the recluse in his study will 
always have the nerve that befits the soldier in the field. 
There was a wide contrast between Luther and Melanch- 
thon. Each was well fitted for his mission, and in praising 
the one we do not condemn the other. 

It is also to be considered, that it is not to be expected 
that men can always agree in judgment, in regard to the 
measures that it would be best to use in a great crisis like 
that to which the church was brought. The orthodox men, 
who condemned the Act and Testimony, no doubt sin- 
cerely thought it to be a rash and unwise measure. If they 
were wrong, it was an error of judgment, for which they 
are not to be blamed. Some of them no doubt sincerely 
distrusted the practical wisdom and tact of the Old 
School leaders who were most prominent. A writer in the 
Princeton Review expresses this distrust in pretty strong 
terms : 

" We have no doubt that sound Old School principles 
would have fared better in the General Assembly — nay, 



264 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE J UN KIN. 

they would have invariably triumphed — if they had been 
managed with even tolerable discretion."* 

Now, this may have been so to some extent ; but when 
it was proposed to add the wisdom of the serpent to the 
harmlessness of the dove, and to exercise "tolerable dis- 
cretion" in the management of the future, the censure 
was perhaps ill-timed. 

It seems to the writer to be no more than justice to the 
Princeton Review to give, in its own language, the reasons 
assigned for making such decided opposition to the "Act 
and Testimony." In the October number, 1834, we read 
as follows : 

"The point now before us is, however, the true nature 
of its recommendations. We say they are extra-constitu- 
tional and revolutionary, and should be opposed by all 
those who do not believe that the crisis demands the dis- 
solution of the church. If such a crisis be made out, or 
assumed, then all the rest is a mere question of the ways 
and means. 

"We do not believe that any such crisis exists. That 
there has been much disorder of various kinds within our 
bounds, that there has been a good deal of erroneous doc- 
trine preached and published, and that many judicatories 
have been criminally remiss, in matters of discipline, we 
do not doubt. These are evils, with regard to which the 
churches should be instructed and warned, and every con- 
stitutional means employed for their correction. But what 
we maintain is, that there has been no such corruption of 
doctrine or remissness in discipline as to justify the divi- 
sion of the church ; and consequently, all measures having 
that design and tendency are wrong, and ought to be 
avoided." 

We believe the writer of this, and his associates of the 
Rexriew, lived to be fully convinced that the crisis was 
much more serious than they at that time thought it to be. 

The Act and Testimony men had, during the year from 

* Princeton Review, 1835, p. 65. 



DEFENDERS OF THE ACT AND TESTIMONY. 265 

May, 1834, to May, 1835, to encounter a double fire, — the 
New School full in front ; the middle men enfilading their 
flanks. Drs. Breckenridge, Engles, J. V. Brown, Baird, 
J. L. Wilson,* Junkin, and others defended the measure 
so successfully that it gained strength throughout the 
church every day. In justice to this document and its 
friends, it ought to be said, that it nowhere proposes to 
make signing it a test of orthodoxy. This was an in- 
ference of its opponents, wholly unsupported by the text 
of the paper, or by anything in the history of its origin 
or promulgation. Its signers simply claimed the right to 
testify against specific errors in doctrine and order, to re- 
commend certain measures for effecting reform, and to ask 
all their brethren, who were willing, to co-operate with them 
in these measures. And if, in the progress of the struggle 
that ensued, some of its friends used it, to any extent, as a 
test, it was not until after both it and they had been 
severely assailed. This is history. 

The efforts of the friends of reform were not confined to 
newspaper articles. They defended the Act and Testi- 
mony and the Convention, and other reform measures pro- 
posed, with vigorous pens ; but they made more private 
efforts also to conciliate the orthodox who opposed these 
measures, by letters and by personal interviews. It is now 
known that, whilst he was prudently reticent, Dr. Archi- 
bald Alexander was by this time convinced that great 
dangers threatened the church, and that extraordinary 

* Dr. Wilson, of Cincinnati, published a pamphlet reply to the Articles 
of the Princeton Review, with the title " The Moderates and the Ultra 
Partisans," — this title having been suggested by a remark in the Review. 
In this pamphlet was the pertinent inquiry,." Why have not the Moderates 
done their duty, and showed the Old School how this thing can be done ? 
Why have they not brought up fairly before the Assembly some of the 
' few dozen' heretics of their acquaintance unconnected with ' peculiar, per- 
sonal, local, or exciting circumstances,' so that the Assembly might have 
given one ' calm and dispassionate' decision?" 

23 



266 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

measures for averting them were needed. As early as 
1831 he wrote to a former pupil: "My mind is full 
of gloomy apprehensions respecting the affairs of our 
church, since the meeting of the last General Assembly. 
I cannot foresee whither we shall be driven. I had never 
suspected that the new men and the new measures would 
so soon prevail in the supreme judicatory of our church . . . 
The burden and heat of the day will soon come upon the 
young men, who will have great need to be strong, to pre- 
serve the ark of the Lord from falling into the hands of the 
Philistines. Quit yourselves like men."* In a letter to 
Dr. Plumer, he writes: "Stand up bravely for the religion 
of your fathers, which is also ours by deliberate choice as 
well as inheritance." After the Assembly of 1834, he says : 
"If it is now found that our differences are so wide that 
we cannot live in peace, let us peaceably agree to sepa- 
rate into two distinct denominations." {lb.) The Doctor 
never signed the Act and Testimony ; but it is not known 
that by any public act or expression he opposed or dis- 
approved it. His surroundings were such that he forbore 
to do anything that might wound k the sensibilities of his 
colleagues. 

* Life of Dr. Alexander, p. 475. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



Pittsburg Convention — Mr. Gillett's Account — Observed a Day of Fasting 
and Prayer — Organization — Business Committee — Committee to Draught 
a Memorial, Dr. Junkin Chairman — Memorial reported — Its Adoption 
and Contents — " Cameronian Eloquence" misrepresented — Assembly of 
1835 — Old School in the Majority — Dr. Phillips Moderator — Memorial 
presented, referred, reported, referred to a Special Committee — Its Chief 
Points adopted by the Assembly— Synod of Delaware dissolved — Mr. 
Barnes' Notes on Romans. 



" r \ ^HE Act and Testimony- Convention," says Mr. 

_L Gillett in his History, " met, according to appoint- 
ment, at Pittsburg, previous to the meeting of the Assembly, 
in May, 1835. Forty-one Presbyteries and thirteen mi- 
norities of Presbyteries were represented. By this body a 
list of grievances was drawn up, to be presented to the 
Assembly, with an earnest demand for redress. These 
grievances were for the most part familiar, — the points 
presented by the Philadelphia Presbytery to the Assembly 
and re-echoed in the memorial. The closing paragraphs 
were in a style of petition not often employed in address- 
ing a deliberative assembly. They were rather in the tone 
of Cameronian eloquence. 

"'We pledge ourselves,' say the memorialists, 'in the 
face of high heaven, that the real Presbyterian Church will 
not shrink from the conflict; and though our earthen 
pitchers may be broken, our lights shall shine, and " the 
sword of the Lord and of Gideon" shall turn the eye of a 
gazing world to that point of the field where victory perches 
on the Banner of Truth.' 

" The Assembly, thanks to the alarm of the Memorialists, 
contained a majority who sympathized with them. The 
grievances were taken up, and the action of the Assembly 

(267) 



268 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

substantially reversed the proceedings of the Assembly of 
the preceding year."* 

Thus curtly does the N. S. historian dispose of this Con- 
vention. Perhaps a little " Cameronian eloquence" was 
needed to stir the hearts of Presbyterians in a somewhat 
latitudinarian age. And as the subject of this memoir 
was the author of the memorial at which the historian 
thus sneers, it seems necessary to give a more extended 
account of the paper, and of the Convention that adopted it. 

The Convention met in Pittsburg, May 14th, 1835, in 
the Second Presbyterian Church. The venerable Dr. Ash- 
bel Green was chosen President, Rev. J. Witherspoon, 
Vice-President, and the Rev. Messrs. James Culbertson 
and A. G. Fairchild, Clerks; after organization, Dr. 
Blythe, by appointment, preached before the Convention. 

Drs. Blythe, Magraw, Montgomery, and Phillips, with 
Elders Robert Wray, M.D., James Lenox, and Archibald 
George, were appointed a Committee to prepare and re- 
port business. The Convention observed the second day 
of the sessions (May 18th) as a day of fasting, humiliation, 
and prayer, in regard to the state of the church; and 
the whole day was thus devoted. Dr. Wilson preached 
in the morning, and Dr. Junkin at night, f Next day the 
Rev. Messrs. George Junkin, John Witherspoon, J. L. 
Wilson, Stuart, and Steel, and Elders Boyd, Owen, Mc- 
pherson, Ferguson, and George, were appointed to pre- 
pare a respectful memorial, to be addressed to the Assem- 
bly, signed by the members as individuals, and by such 
other ministers and elders as might choose to unite with 
them. I 

The business committee presented, during the sessions, 
various subjects, which were discussed and referred to the 
committee on the memorial, sometimes with suggestions : 

* Gillett, vol. ii. p. 491. f Brown's Vindication, p. 190. 

% Baird's Hist., p. 433. 



PITTSBURG MEMORIAL. 269 

so that this committee shaped the ultimate action of the 
body. They made their report on Tuesday afternoon, its 
author having had to spend nearly a whole night in its pre- 
paration ; for he was present in the sessions of the Conven- 
tion, and took part in its deliberations.* It was unanimously 
adopted on Wednesday afternoon, after full discussion. 
This was only the evening previous to the meeting of the 
Assembly, and there was not much time for obtaining sig- 
natures ; but it was signed by seventy-two ministers and 
thirty-six elders. 

This Memorial was couched in solemn, earnest, and re- 
spectful terms, and in a style of vigorous explicitness. It 
set forth eight grievances as matters of complaint, for 
which redress was sought. 1. The denial of the right of 
examining intrants. 2. The denial of the right of condemn- 
ing and bearing testimony against printed heresy. 3. The 
erection of elective affinity church courts. 4. The exist- 
ence and operation, within the church, of Missionary 
Societies, which are under no control of the church, and 
wholly irresponsible for their doings. 5. The education 
of young men for the ministry of our church by Societies 
not responsible to the church, and not friendly to her dis- 
tinctive doctrine and order. 6. The evils growing out of 
the Plan of Union. 7. The correspondence, by delegates, 
with Congregational Associations of New England, which 
gives to them an influence in the councils of our church 
which cannot be exerted by us in theirs. 8. The failure of the 
General Assembly, in late years, to bear testimony against 
errors admitted to exist. "There is nothing worth con- 
tending for but Truth; and, if we are not greatly mistaken, 

* The original draught of the memorial is still preserved ; and in a note 
on the manuscript, signed by Dr. Junlcin, he says, " The following was 
written, except a part of sixth or seventh items, between the hours of 8J 
o'clock, Monday night, May 18th, and 3 o'clock on the morning of the 
19th, — six hours and a half, — in my cousin's house, in Alleghany." 

23* 



270 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

great and fearful inroads have been made on the doctrinal 
standards of our church, and that, too, not in matters of 
minor consequence, but in the very fundamental principles 
of the Gospel. One alarming feature of the errors, against 
which we would earnestly entreat this General Assembly to 
lift up a strong testimony, we beg leave to present. It is 
their systematic arrangement. Did a solitary individual, 
here and there, in cases few and far between, hold to a 
single insulated position that is false, and maintain it even 
with pertinacity, it would not afford ground of serious 
alarm. But the case is far otherwise. The errors abroad 
in the church are fundamental, vital, and systematic. The 
maintenance of one involves the whole, and must lead a 
logical mind to embrace the system. Now, the system 
appears to your memorialists to lead directly towards Socin- 
ianism. This language may seem harsh and severe. Alas ! 
dear brethren, it is the harshness of love, and the severity 
of truth. It is not pleasant for us to entertain such an 
opinion ; but the evidence rushes upon us from the pulpit 

and the press, and we cannot resist the conviction 

Another alarming feature is the boldness with which the 
very existence of these errors is denied. To this General 
Assembly it would not be information, were we to state 
that the same system of error has been characterized by 
the same wily policy in every age of its appearance in the 
church, — first to deny its own existence, and when that 
was no longer practicable, to assume a mask, and clothe 
itself with zeal as a cloak. This strong feature of the 
modern, singularly identifies it with the ancient heresy." 

A list of errors, corresponding with those enumerated 
in the Act and Testimony, is then given ; and the docu- 
ment proceeds with the following appeal : 

"Now, reverend Fathers and Brethren, we humbly con- 
ceive that this is another gospel ; entirely and essentially 
different from that laid down in the Bible and our Confes- 



MEMORIAL TO THE CONVENTION. 



271 



sion of Faith. And we do most solemnly and sorrowfully 
believe that, unless the Spirit of the Lord raise up a stand- 
ard against it, it will be followed in our church, as it has 
been elsewhere, by the entire system of Pelagianism, and 
ultimately of Socinianism. If the Atonement is not essen- 
tially vicarious and penal, why demand a Divifie Redeemer? 
If an exhibition is all that is required, why not hold up 
Stephen, or Peter, or Paul, or John Huss, or John Rogers? 
This tendency towards Socinianism, we think, is plainly 
manifested in the denial of the eternal filiation of the Son 
of God. Again, if the Spirit's work is merely a moral 
suasion, why a Divine and Almighty Spirit ? Must not the 
mind which denies the necessity of an omnipotent influ- 
ence be strongly tempted to disbelieve the existence of an 
Omnipotent Agent ? 

"In pressing our petition for redress of all the grievances 
we have enumerated, and such others in regard to measures 
as the wisdom of this Assembly may select, we entreat you 
to turn your eyes upon the aspect of the world. Lo ! what 
an inviting field for benevolent enterprise ! And is there 
a body of believers in the whole church militant invested 
with so many of the qualifications to enter it, and gather 
the rich harvest of glory to our Divine Redeemer, as the 
Presbyterian Church ? The position of our country points 
us out, the position of our church points us out, the posi- 
tion of the world points us out ; the voice of unborn and 
unsanctified millions calls us to the conflict ; the Lord 
of Hosts Himself has gone down into the plain before us, 
and chides our long delay. Now, we ask, brethren, what 
causes this delay ? Why, when the armies of the living 
God begin to consolidate, and Himself gives the watch- 
word — Truth and Victory, — oh ! why this delay ? Ah ! 
there is division in the camp ! 'There be some that trou- 
ble us.' Innovation distracts our counsels, alienates our 
affections, turns the sword of brother in upon brother ; and 
the Master's work remains undone. 

"Do you ask, How shall the evil be remedied? We 
reply, Let this Assembly come up to the work of reform. 
Let them establish the ancient landmarks of truth ; let 
them unfurl the banner of the constitution. Let all 
who cannot fight under this, grasp the standard that suits 
their own views ; put on their own approved armor ; 



272 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

descend into the plain, and stand or fall to their own 
Master." 

Then follows the passage characterized by Mr. Gillett as 
"Cameronian eloquence"; and it will not increase the 
confidence of the public in the fairness of that historian to 
call attention to the fact, that he quotes it so out of its con- 
nection, as to leave the impression upon his readers that the 
words "We pledge ourselves, in the face of high heaven, 
that the real Presbyterian Church will not shrink from the 
conflict," etc., relates to the ecclesiastical conflict then in 
progress; whereas, it relates, as every reader can see for 
himself, to the missionary conflict with the powers of dark- 
ness which the church is waging, and which was the theme 
of the immediate preceding context. 

The Memorial then concludes : 

"Venerable Fathers and Brethren, we are done. With 
you, and God, and Christ, and his Spirit, we leave our 
cause. That He may direct all your counsels in this behalf 
to His own glory and the Church's good, is the sincere 
prayer of your humble memorialists." 

Each of the points of grievance mentioned in this docu- 
ment was set forth with an array of facts, and compact and 
forceful argument, so that the very reading of the paper in 
the Assembly brought lucidly before that body just what 
its signers desired. The document itself is recorded in 
substance both in the Minutes of the Assembly and in 
Baird's Digest. 

The General Assembly of 1835 met the next day after 
the Convention had concluded its labors. The Presby- 
teries, it appeared, had been aroused to the dangers that 
beset the church, and to action adapted to avert them. A 
majority of Old School men controlled its decisions. The 
Rev. W. W. Phillips, D.D., of New York, a signer of the 
Act and Testimony, was elected Moderator, by a majority 
of thirty-four, over the Rev. Mr. Leach, of Virginia, proof 



GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1835. 273 

that up to this time Slavery had not entered in as an element 
in this controversy.* 

The Memorial was presented to the Assembly early in its 
sessions, and referred to the Committee of Bills and Over- 
tures. That committee, with little delay, reported it to the 
house, recommending that the several subjects which it 
embraces be referred to appropriate committees. Dr. Hill, 

* A little episode in the history of the organization of this Assembly will 
illustrate Dr. Junkin's tact and forecast as an ecclesiastical parliamentarian. 
At such a crisis, when it was supposed that parties were possibly nearly bal- 
anced, it was important to each that it should control the organization of the 
house, and have the Moderator and the Committee of Elections of its own 
friends. Dr. Ely knew this, and sought to give the New School this advantage. 
Dr. Lindsley, the Moderator of the last year, was absent, but had, by letter, 
requested the Rev. Dr. Wm. A. McDowell to preside, and preach the open- 
ing sermon. He was present, but, being unwell, asked Dr. Miller to preach, 
intending himself to preside. After the opening religious services were 
over, and before Dr. McDowell could reach the chair, Dr. Ely rose and 
stated that he (as Stated Clerk) was the standing organ of the Presbyterian 
Church during the intervals of the General Assembly ; and that as Dr. Be- 
man was the only previous Moderator who was present, and a member of 
the present Assembly, he, according to the Constitution, was entitled to pre- 
side. Professing to quote from the Form of Government, he said, " the last 
Moderator present, being a member of the house," was entitled to preside. 
He made a motion that Dr. Beman should take the chair. This motion Dr. 
Ely put, and it was carried; but one "No" being heard, and that in the 
clear, shrill voice of Dr. Junkin. He saw what might be the effect of per- 
mitting that adroit party leader, Dr. Beman, to appoint the Committee of 
Elections, who were to decide on doubtful commissions. 

So soon as Dr. Beman took the chair a recess was taken until afternoon. 
As the members passed out, many asked Dr. Junkin why he voted "No." 
He gave his reasons; said that Dr. Ely's citation of the Constitution was 
erroneous, and that several precedents of a contrary kind were on record. 
Dr. David Elliott proposed to get the minutes during recess, and examine. 
It was done, and found as Dr. Junkin had stated. 

After recess, a motion was made to reconsider the vote calling Dr. Be- 
man to the chair. A warm discussion ensued, in which Drs. Miller, Blythe, 
Junkin, and others took one side, and Dr. Ely, Judge Darling, and others 
the other; and it was carried to put Dr. McDowell in the chair. Dr. Ely's 
words were shown to be an interpolation. — Statement of Dr. Elliott to the 
author, and jfudge Ewing, in " The Presbyterian." 



274 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

of Va., and Dr. Wm. Wisner resisted this, on the ground 
that the Moderator was a memorialist, and might shape the 
committees to suit the petitioners. The latter thought, that 
while the Assembly was considering the memorial one not 
a memorialist should occupy the chair, and all that were 
memorialists should withdraw. It seemed to have been 
forgotten that, when the other party had the majority, 
every Old School measure was put into the hands of com- 
mittees hostile to it. And the idea of excluding from a 
deliberative body, with judicial and administrative powers, 
all persons who had expressed opinions upon questions that 
were to come before the body, was quite a novel method 
of securing fair play. The Memorial, however, with other 
kindred papers, was referred to a committee, the chairman 
of which, Dr. Miller, of Princeton, was far from being a 
signer of the Act and Testimony, or of the Memorial, and 
of which Drs. Elliott, Hoge, and McElhenny, with Elders 
Stone, Street, and Banks, were the other members. 

After several days' consideration, this committee reported 
a paper, in which, after an introduction stating that they 
had given the subjects committed to them that calm, im- 
partial, and solemn consideration which their importance 
demanded, they say : 

"In approaching these weighty subjects, the committee 
deemed it to be an obvious duty to exclude from their view 
all those principles which result from the wishes and plans 
of different parties in the church, and to take for their 
guide simply the Word of God, which we consider the only 
infallible rule of faith and practice, and those public for- 
mularies, by which we have solemnly agreed and stipulated 
with each other to be governed in all our proceedings. The 
moment we depart from these, we are not only exposed to 
all the evils of discord, but also run the risk of destroying 
those bonds of union by which we have been so long bound 
together as an ecclesiastical body." 

The disastrous results of such a departure are then set 



REPORT ON MEMORIAL. 



•75 



forth in clear and solemn terms, and then they recommend, 
for the adoption of the Assembly, eight extended resolu- 
tions, covering the points upon which the memorialists had 
asked them to make deliverances. These resolutions 
granted nearly all the memorialists sought ; the only ex- 
ception being in regard to the Voluntary Societies, which 
they deemed it unwise, at present, authoritatively to ex- 
clude. The resolution on this subject, however, declared 
it to be "the first and binding duty of the Presbyterian 
Church to sustain her own Boards ; and that Voluntary Asso- 
ciations, operating within the church, ought to feel bound 
to neither educate nor send forth in her churches men who 
hold sentiments contrary to her Standards." 

This was in their fifth resolution. The first asserted the 
inherent right of a Presbytery to examine intrants; the 
second, the right of any judicatory to take up, examine, 
condemn, and bear testimony against any heretical publica- 
tions ; the third condemned, as unconstitutional, the erec- 
tion of judicatories upon the principle of elective affinity, 
i.e. with no geographical limits; therefore, in the fourth it 
was resolved, that " at and after the meeting of the Presby- 
tery of Philadelphia, in October next, the Synod of Dela- 
ware shall be dissolved, and the Presbyteries composing it 
shall then and thereafter be annexed to the Synod of Phila- 
delphia," and directed that Synod to take such order in 
regard to the division of Presbyteries, "as maybe deemed 
expedient and constitutional;" the sixth declared it no 
longer desirable to form churches on the " Plan of Union," 
and requested the General Association of Connecticut to 
consent to the annulling of that Plan, from and after the 
next meeting of the Association ; the seventh declined to 
terminate the plan of correspondence with the Associations 
of the Congregational churches of New England, since 
delegates under it were now divested of the voting power; 
and the eighth condemned the errors specified in the me- 



27 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

morial, which the Assembly said they feared were too widely 
diffused through the church.* 

The shape of the resolution dissolving the Synod of Dela- 
ware was modified in the progress of the discussion. Dr. 
Elliott had moved the dissolution of that Synod and of the 
Assembly's Presbytery; and it was evident that the motion 
was about to pass, when Dr. Ely brought in a compromise 
proposition, in which the words "at and after the next 
meeting of the Synod of Philadelphia" were inserted. Dr. 
Miller moved a briefer paper, but still including these 
words. Dr. Ely accepted it, and it was unanimously passed. 

Thus ended, for the time, this great struggle. The inno- 
vating party were, of course, much dissatisfied, but by no 
means relinquished hope of ultimate success. They forth- 
with set about preparing for another General Assembly, 
and, as we shall see, took advantage of the phraseology 
which Dr. Ely had suggested, as above mentioned, to em- 
barrass the process of discipline. 

Meanwhile it became manifest, that the brethren who had 
adopted, in whole or in part, the New Theology, felt en- 
couraged, by the protection extended to it, to wax bolder 
in its dissemination. Early in 1835, and before the meet- 
ing of the Assembly of that year, the Rev. Albert Barnes 
published his work on the Epistle to the Romans. In this 
book he reproduced, in a form more pronounced than in 
his Sermon, the same errors to which a portion of his Pres- 
bytery had objected when he first came to Philadelphia. 
This led to a formal prosecution and trial, in which Dr. 
Junkin bore an important part, and the history of which 
will occupy the next chapter. 

* Minutes, 1835, p. 27. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

History of Barnes' Second Trial — Dr. Junkin prefers Charges— His 
Animus — Letter to Mr. Barnes — Mr. B.'s Reply — Dr. Steel's Agency — 
Difficulties started by Presbytery — Apparent Reluctance — Term Heresy 
— Refusal of Presbytery to go on with the Trial — -Reconsideration — The 
Trial — The Decision — Questions about Appeal — Appeal to Synod — Dr. 
Boardman and Two Elders. 

" TN February, 1835, I was in Philadelphia on business, 
|_ and, whilst there, had my attention called to the new 
work of the Rev. Albert Barnes, on the Epistle to the 
Romans. This arrest of attention was by an unknown 
correspondent of the Presbyterian, over the signature of 
Veritas, who presented a number of extracts from the 
work, accompanied by very judicious remarks, pointing out 
the errors of the notes, and their opposition to the stand- 
ards of the Presbyterian Church. The new book was the 
subject of frequent conversation, and, among other places, 
at the table of my friend, the Rev. John Chambers, who 
stepped to his study and brought the book. I read a few 
pages, and was induced to procure a copy, to examine at 
my leisure. This examination resulted in the conviction, 
right or wrong, that, as no other person appeared disposed 
to do it, it would be proper for me to comply with the 
order of the General Assembly, and endeavor to procure 
an ultimate decision on these controverted subjects. 

"After this determination, the next question was as to 
the manner ; and here, too, it appeared to me the Assem- 
bly was correct ; the only proper way was to bring charges 
against the Author. Before I could arrive at these conclu- 
sions it was early in March, and it appeared exceedingly 
desirable to have the whole matter embraced within as 
short a space of time as practicable, so as to give occasion 
to the least possible amount of agitation with its evils. 
24 (277) 



278 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Hence the plan, proposed in my letter below, of making 
the case what, in civil matters, is called an amicable suit."* 

The writer of these pages was in habits of almost daily 
intercourse with Dr. Junkin, at that time, and he knows 
that the conviction, that it was his duty to undertake this 
unpleasant and self-denying work, was the result of much 
prayer, self-examination, and reflection. It was no rash 
or ambitious resolve. As the writer one day entered 
Dr. J.'s study, the latter said, in a tone of subdued sad- 
ness, "I think it will be my duty to prefer charges 
against Mr. Barnes ; the troubles of our church will never 
end until the doctrinal questions are definitely settled." 
This was perhaps the first utterance to human ears of a 
purpose which he seemed reluctantly to have formed. In 
the introduction to his book called "The Vindication," 
he proceeds to narrate the steps he took in pursuance of his 
determination. He wrote to the Rev. Robert Steel to 
ascertain when Mr. Barnes' Presbytery was next to meet. 
Mr. Steel informed him that their next stated meeting was 
to have been late in April, but that a special meeting was 
called on the 20th of March, for the purpose of changing 
the time of the stated meeting to an earlier date. And 
Mr. Steel advised him to send forward his papers, to be 
presented at that meeting, if it should be resolved into a 
stated meeting. Dr. J.'s object was to have the case matured 
for the next General Assembly. Agreeably to this arrange- 
ment, Dr. Junkin wrote to Mr. Barnes as follows : 

" Lafayette College, March 16th, 1835. 

" Reverend and dear Sir, — In your Notes on the 
Epistle to the Romans, there are doctrines set forth, which, 
in my humble opinion, are contrary to the Standards of 
the Presbyterian Church and to the Word of God. It 
also appears to me, and has long so appeared, that these, 

* Introduction to Dr. J.'s Vindication, p. iii. 



CHARGES AGAINST MR. BARNES. 



279 



and certain affiliated doctrines, have been the chief causes 
of the unhappy distractions over which we mourn. 

"A third opinion, operating to the production of this 
communication, is, that peace and union in evangelical 
effort cannot take place so long as these important doc- 
trinal points remain unsettled ; and that, therefore, all the 
friends of such union and peace ought to desire their final 
adjustment by the proper judicatories of the church. It 
is certainly true that many have wished to see them brought 
up, fairly and legally, before the proper tribunals, uncon- 
nected with questions of merely ecclesiastical policy, and 
without any admixture of personal or congregational feel- 
ings. Regret has often been expressed by many, and by 
myself among others, that the Presbytery of Philadelphia 
had not, at the outset, instituted process against your- 
self, instead of the course which they pursued. I am 
sure, however, they did what they thought for the best. 
It is much easier to find fault, after a measure has been 
put in operation, than to foresee its defects and prevent 
them. 

"Now, dear Brother, your recent publication has re- 
opened the door, and, unworthy as I am, and incompetent 
to the solemn duty, yet duty I feel it to be to enter it, and, 
by an open, fair, candid, and Christian prosecution of the 
case, to bring out a formal and legal decision of your 
Presbytery on the points alluded to. I therefore intend, 
Deo volente, to prefer charges against you, founded solely 
upon your Notes on Romans, and referring to no other 
evidence for their support than what shall be deduced 
from that book. 

" In prosecuting these charges, I hope I shall be enabled 
to act with gravity, solemnity, brotherly affection, and all 
the respect due to a Court of Christ. The object is Peace 
through union in the Truth ; and I hope the God of truth 
and peace will direct us to a happy issue. Most conscien- 
tiously do I believe that you have fallen into dangerous 
error. I feel that your doctrine shakes the foundation of 
my personal hopes for eternity. If it be true, then I can- 
not 'read my title clear to mansions in the skies.' Around 
the discussion of a subject so solemn, I cannot doubt, the 
Son of God will throw a hallowed influence which will call 
up feelings very different from those that too often agitate 



2 8o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

ecclesiastical bodies, where principles of minor conse- 
quence acquire exciting power from adventitious circum- 
stances. 

" May I now ask of you the favor to transmit to Mr. 
Henry McKeen's, No. 142 Market Street, a note with re- 
sponses to the following queries, viz.: 1. Will you admit 
the Notes on Romans, bearing your name, to be your own 
production, and save me the trouble of proving it? 2. 
Will you waive the constitutional right of ten days, etc. 
(Book, pp. 396-402), and so let the case come up and pass 
through the Presbytery, with as little delay as possible, 
provided I furnish you with a copy of the charges, at 
least that number of days beforehand ? To these postu- 
lates I can see no reasonable objection on your part, and 
I presume there will be none. A friend of mine will re- 
ceive your reply, and dispose of it agreeably to arrange- 
ments already made, and will also inform me of the time 
and place of the Presbytery's meeting. 

"Your brother in the Lord, 

"Geo. Junkin." 

To this letter was returned the following answer : 

" Philadelphia, March 18th, 1835. 

"Rev. Sir, — Your letter of the 16th inst. came to hand 
to-day. In regard to the 'postulates' which you have 
submitted to my attention in your letter, I remark that the 
Notes on the Romans are my production, and that I trust 
I shall never so far forget myself as to put any one to the 
' trouble of proving it. ' On those Notes I have bestowed 
many an anxious, a prayerful, and a pleasant hour. They 
are the result of much deliberate attention ; and of all the 
research which my circumstances and my time permitted. 
I commenced and continued them with the humble hope 
of extending my usefulness beyond the immediate sphere 
of my labors in the pulpit ; nor have I any reason to doubt 
that, in this, I was under the governance and direction of 
that sacred Teacher by whom the Scriptures were inspired. 
If others would make a better book on the important Epis- 
tle in question, I should heartily rejoice in their doing it. 
I have never been so vain as to think that in the exposition 
of a book like the Epistle to the Romans — so intrinsically 



MR. BARNES' REPLY. 2 8l 

difficult, so profound, so often the subject of commentary 
and controversy — my work was infallible ; or that there 
might not be room for much honest difference of opinion 
and exposition. Nor am I conscious of any such stubborn 
attachment to my own views, there expressed, as to be un- 
willing to be convinced of their error if they are incorrect, 
or to retract them if I am convinced of their error. Whether 
the act of charging a minister with heresy, of arraigning 
him for a high crime, without a friendly note, without a 
Christian interview, without any attempt to convince of 
erroneous interpretation, be the Scripture mode, or most 
likely to secure the desired end, belongs to others, not to 
me, to determine. I would just say that I have not so 
learned Matthew xviii. 15-17. I have no reason to dread 
a trial or its results. I mourn only that your time and 
mine, and that perhaps of some hundreds of others, should 
be taken from the direct work of saving men, and wasted 
in irritating strifes and contentions. On others, however, 
not on myself, will be the responsibility. 

"In regard to the ' postulate' in your letter, that I ' would 
waive the constitutional right of ten days,' etc., I have 
only to say that if any man feel it his duty to arraign me 
before my Presbytery, I presume it would be best in the 
end, and most satisfactory to all parties concerned, that the 
principles and rules of the Book of Discipline be formally 
adhered to, and that it is not my purpose to make any 
further concessions. 

"As I have no acquaintance with the gentleman whom 
you refer to in Market Street ; as he has given me no occa- 
sion to address a letter to him • and as it is evidently not 
necessary that our correspondence on the subject should be 
conducted, like that of duellists, through the intervention 
of ' a friend,' I thought it best not to address him, unless 
he shall make it proper, but to answer yourself without 
delay. I am yours, etc. 

"Albert Barnes. 

"Rev. G. Junkin, D.D." 

On the 1 8th of March, Dr. Junkin forwarded, through 
Rev. Mr. Steel, to the Presbytery, the following letter : 
24* 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 



" To the Rev. Moderator and Second Presbytery of 
Philadelphia. 

" Brethren, — To you belongs the solemn and responsi- 
ble duty 'of condemning erroneous opinions, which injure 
the purity and peace of the church, of removing and judg- 
ing ministers, of watching over the personal and profes- 
sional conduct of all your members.' 

"Now, one of your members has, as appears to me, 
published, in a recent work, certain erroneous opinions, of 
a dangerous tendency to the peace and purity of the church, 
and to the souls of its members. In that publication he 
has observed, ' He who holds an opinion on the subject of 
religion will not be ashamed to avow it.' As, therefore, 
he appears willing to let his opinions be known, and to 
abide their consequences, and as to me they appear dan- 
gerous, (in the absence of a more suitable advocate of the 
opposite truths) I ask of your reverend body the privilege 
of preferring charges against the Rev. Albert Barnes. 

"As I have stated in a letter to that brother, 'the object 
is Peace, through union in the truth,' etc." [Here he 
quotes from his letter to Mr. Barnes, above cited, and then 
proceeds :] "Hence this measure. It is designed to secure 
a legal decision, and put an end to distractions consequent 
upon present fluctuations. I do, therefore, pray and be- 
seech the Presbytery to take order in the premises, and to 
facilitate the issue with the least possible delay. I have no 
witnesses to cite but Brother Barnes himself; and shall be 
confined to his testimony contained in his Notes on Ro- 
mans. These are referred to in part in connection with 
the charges, and other portions will be read on the trial for 
further proof and illustration. 

" Your brother in the Lord, 

" Geo. Junkin." 

We have shown, in chapter xxiii., that the General 
Assembly of 1834, under the lead, in part, of the very 
men who were most prominent and influential in this Second 
Presbytery of Philadelphia, had declared that it was im- 
proper to take up, try, and condemn printed publications ; 
and that "the fair mode of procedure is, if the author be 



PRESENTATION OF THE CHARGES. 283 

alive, and known to be of our communion, to institute 
process against him, and give him a fair and constitutional 
trial. " But when it was proposed to these brethren to carry- 
out this "mode of procedure," they betrayed a strong re- 
luctance to do it. Both on the part of the Presbytery and 
of the accused, needless delay and embarrassment were 
interposed. Although Mr. Barnes' letter to Dr. Junkin 
(inserted above) was dated on Wednesday the 18th March, 
it was not mailed until Saturday the 21st, so that it 
could not reach Easton until Monday evening the 23d, 
« — the day the Presbytery was to meet, — rendering it 
impossible for Dr. Junkin to have been informed of the 
meeting. The pro re tiata meeting was held on the 20th, 
and the 23d appointed as a stated meeting. In regard to 
this he asks, "Why did Mr. Barnes hold his answer to me 
from Wednesday until Saturday, so that it could not reach 
me until Monday? Why not send it, as I requested, to 
142 Market Street? Did he suspect that if he should do 
so, it might enable Brother Steel, or some one else, to meet 
the Presbytery, and present the charges? Why did the 
Presbytery on Friday change their stated meeting until 
Monday ? Did they wish to avoid receiving the charges 
of which they had received intimation ? These queries 
are important, as they seem to evidence a disposition to 
shun a trial. ' Charity thinketh no evil : ' she, however, 
'rejoiceth in the truth.' "* 

On Monday the 23d, the Second Presbytery met, and 
Mr. Steel presented Dr. Junkin's letter to the Presbytery 
above cited, and also the charges, of which Mr. Barnes 
then took a copy. This letter produced some sensation, 
and drew forth from members some unkind and unjust 
insinuations, — such as, There was secret collusion ; there 
must have been a caucus, and the proposed Prosecutor was 

* Vindication, p. vii. 



284 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

but the tool of that caucus ; Dr. Junkin could not prose- 
cute before that Presbytery, for he had signed the Act and 
Testimony, which denied the legality of the court ; Why 
was he not present in person ? etc. etc. Dr. Steel assured 
them "that the suspicion of a conspiracy was as groundless 
as it was unkind ;* that when last in the city, Dr. Junkin 
had not read Mr. Barnes' book ; that the only preconcert 
was the arrangement with him (Dr. Steel) for the presenta- 
tion of the papers in the necessary absence of Dr. Junkin ; 



* In noticing the commencement of the trial, The Presbyterian of the 
following week explicitly disavows for its Editor, and other persons named 
in connection with the idea of a caucus, any knowledge of Dr. Junkin's 
intention, until his letter was delivered to the Second Presbytery. The 
Editor spoke as follows : 

"The (Assembly's) Second Presbytery met on Tuesday, June 30th, in 
the First Church, to try Mr. Barnes on the charges preferred against him 
by Dr. Junkin. The result of this trial may be easily anticipated. On this 
subject we feel obliged to notice a most unwarrantable and incendiary 
movement, executed by one or more of that party, who have so pathetically 
deprecated ' unhallowed excitement.' On Monday morning the following 
notice was placarded on the watch-boxes in the most public parts of the 
city: 

'"NOTICE! 
" ' Dr. A. Green, Dr. Cuyler, Mr. Engles, and Mr. Winchester 
vs. 
" ' The Rev. Albert Barnes ! 
" ' The above case of religious PERSECUTION will be tried in the church 
on Washington Square, on Tuesday morning, the 30th inst. The prosecu- 
tion to be conducted by Dr. Junkin, in behalf of the prosecutors.' 

" The design of the above is obvious. It is to intimidate the orthodox, 
and to influence public opinion against them. An orderly trial cannot be 
conducted, in the very method suggested by our opponents, without sub- 
jecting prosecutors to all the consequences which might result from an 
appeal to the prejudices and passions of men not immediately interested. 
As far as the four individuals named are concerned, who are thus placarded 
as ' prosecutors,' the public should be apprised that they were entirely igno- 
rant of Dr. Junkin's intention to prosecute Mr. Barnes until it was made 
public by his own letter to the Presbytery." 

The writer of this memoir is of opinion, that it would be unjust to attribute 
the above-quoted placard to Mr. Barnes, or any of his more judicious 
friends. No doubt they would have disapproved of it. It was probably 
the work of some inconsiderate and heated young man. 



COMPLAINT TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 285 

that the reason of that absence is obvious, — you had fixed 
the time of your meeting so that he could not possibly know 
of the meeting; but let a time be set for the trial, and he 
will attend," etc. 

The result was the adoption of the following Resolutions, 
which the Stated Clerk was directed to send to Dr. Junkin, 
viz. : 

"Resolved, That this Presbytery cannot regard any Letter 
from an absent person as sufficient to constitute the com- 
mencement of a process against a gospel minister. 

"Resolved, That the said letter be preserved on the files 
of this judicatory." 

In the introductory minute the letter was described as 
"a letter received from the Rev. Robert Steel, purporting 
to have been addressed by the Rev. Dr. Junkin to this 
Presbytery." The letter was in his own handwriting, and 
signed with his own signature, well known to most of the 
members. Instead of fixing a day of meeting for this 
business, as Mr. Steel requested, the Presbytery adjourned 
to meet at the call of the Moderator. Thus they could be 
called together from time to time, on short notice, without 
publicity, so as to transact their ordinary business, and yet 
Dr. Junkin have no knowledge of the time and place of 
meeting. 

Believing that he saw in these facts evidence of a reluc- 
tance to enter upon a trial, — indeed, to evade one, and 
prevent the decision of the doctrinal question, — Dr. Jun- 
kin determined to prevent the thwarting of his purpose by 
taking up a complaint to the General Assembly, which 
"brings the whole proceedings" up to the superior judica- 
tory. He accordingly addressed to the Moderator of the 
Presbytery a notice of complaint, with reasons therefor. 

His reasons for complaint were, — 1. That the reason of 
the Presbytery for not commencing process had no founda- 
tion in the Constitution of the church; for the Book says 



286 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

that "charges must be reduced to writing" (p. 401); 2. 
Because the Presbytery had given him no notice of any 
future meeting, at which he might be personally present ; 
3. Because, although they had retained and filed the 
charges, they had virtually refused to permit Mr. Barnes to 
be tried on them ; 4. Because such refusal is a violation of 
the Constitution, which makes it the duty of the Presbytery 
"to condemn erroneous opinions" (p. 359), and which 
implies, that when "some person or persons undertake to 
make out the charges" and "reduce them to writing," the 
duty of the Presbytery is to afford a fair, open, and candid 
trial; 5. Because said refusal is directly in opposition to 
the order of the last General Assembly (1834, Min. p. 26); 
and 6. Because the Presbytery was bound by the Book 
(chap. v. 8) forthwith to cite the pastor (Mr. Barnes) and 
myself to appear (which seems to imply their absence), and 
be heard at the next meeting. 

Appended to this complaint was a semi-official note to 
the Moderator, Mr. Grant, in which, among other things, 
Dr. Junkin said : 

"Brother Grant, may I not hope that the Presbytery 
will throw no obstacle in the way? Brother Barnes says : 
' I have no reason to dread a. trial or its result.' Now, my 
dear Brother, will not the true time-saving expedient here 
be, to come right up to the point ? Will not putting off, 
and standing upon doubtful points of order, be the very 
way to make a protracted and a perplexing business of it ? 
. . . Should you call a meeting about the 7th of April, 
I will have all the charges, and the testimony adduced in 
their support, written out, and lay a copy on your table, so 
that your Clerk will have no trouble in writing it, and you 
no delay. Brother Barnes surely needs no time to prepare ; 
the whole testimony is already in his mind. He says, ' On 
these Notes I have bestowed many an anxious, a prayerful, 
and a pleasant hour.' He assuredly has not to labor, as I 
have, in arriving at their meaning. He has not his opinion 
to form. He has counted the cost. He believes the doc- 
trines he has taught to be truth. If he and the Presbytery, 



RE CONSIDERA TION. 287 

after the proposed examination, shall still be of that opin- 
ion, I am sure they will say so. I may misunderstand his 

language. Let its true meaning appear Should 

a meeting be appointed for the trial, as above requested, 
you will let me know. Or should it be thought necessary 
to have me present, before the charges will be admitted to 
lie, let me know. Only remember, our public examina- 
tions in College are on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 
of next week. For my presence, I must confess, I see no 
color of reason ; if obliged to go, I shall feel that I am put 
to trouble and expense without necessity and without law ; 
yet I will go any time after Thursday next. 

" Now, may I not hope that Mr. Grant's influence will 
go to meet my sense of duty? Allow me to add that, when 
I began this note, it was designed to be private. It may 
be viewed as semi-official. 

"Very respectfully, your brother in the Lord, 

" Geo. Junkin." 

The Presbytery finally opened the way for a trial, and he 
therefore did not prosecute his Complaint. 

On the 30th of March he received the following : 

" Philadelphia, March 28, 1835. 

" Dear Brother, — I have been desired officially to in- 
form you that the Second Presbytery of Philadelphia will 
meet by adjournment, at the call of the Moderator, on 
Thursday, the 2d day of April, 1835, at nme o'clock a.m., 
in the Lecture-room of the First Presbyterian Church, on 
Washington Square. This being an adjourned meeting, 
Presbytery is competent to transact any business that may 
come before them. 

"Attest, Thomas Eustace, Stated Clerk" 

On the opposite page was the following private note : 

" Dear Brother, — You will see by the above that your 
wish has been promptly complied with. I believe there is 
no desire to shrink from an investigation on the part of 
Mr. Barnes or the Presbytery. Yours truly, 

"Thomas Eustace." 



288 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

It is noteworthy, that although Dr. Junkin had told the 
Moderator that he would be engaged in the closing exer- 
cises of his College Session up to Thursday, the 2d of 
April, and said that any time after Thursday he could at- 
tend if need be, yet the Presbytery was called to meet at 
nine o'clock a.m. of that very day; and, in order to reach 
the City in season, he must needs travel the greater part of 
the preceding night. All these facts seemed to indicate 
a disposition to avoid the trial, and would lead impartial 
minds to infer that, but for the notice of Complaint, a 
hearing would not have been afforded ; and that in the 
very prompt call of the Presbytery even, there was an effort 
to avoid an issue. 

After completing his labors in the College examinations, 
on Wednesday, the 1st of April, Dr. Junkin set out, and, 
by travelling in the night (fifty-six miles), reached Phila- 
delphia about nine o'clock on the morning of the 2d, and 
entered the Lecture-Room at fifteen minutes after the hour 
appointed for the meeting of the Presbytery. At that 
moment the Clerk was reading the complaint of Dr. J., 
although the minutes of the last meeting had not, as is 
usual, been read. After the reading was over, Dr. Junkin 
and some others were invited to sit as corresponding 
members. The Presbytery attended to different items of 
business, at every hiatus in which Dr. J. looked for an 
introduction of his own. But no allusion was made to it. 
He waited till Afternoon, yet no sign. Finally, about five 
o'clock p.m., he invited the Presbytery's attention to it 
himself. He stated that as he had tabled charges, and had 
received official notice that the Presbytery was to meet 
to-day, and as the ten days' stay was up, he hoped the 
trial would now proceed. 

Dr. Ely said there had been no authoritative notice issued ; 
if the clerk had sent such a paper, it was from not knowing 
his duty. Dr. J. then read the letter of the Clerk, but was 



THE TERM HERESY. 289 

assured that it was not designed as a citation, as the Pres- 
bytery had no charges before them, and was asked whether 
he had now any charges to table. He replied that he had 
not now any charges to table ; they were already tabled, 
and had been taken possession of by the Court, and ordered, 
by a formal recorded Resolution, "to be preserved on the 
files of the Judicatory," and it was a strange procedure 
now to ask him for a paper that they themselves had put on 
file ten days ago. 

It was then resolved to ask Dr. Junkin whether he now 
preferred these charges, and designed to sustain them. He 
replied that some ten days since he had presented them, 
and had now come prepared to prove their truth and 
relevancy. 

Objection was made to the charges at this juncture, sug- 
gested by Mr. Duffield, then sitting as a corresponding mem- 
ber, because the term Heresy was not in them. But Dr. Ely 
made some judicious remarks, which seemed to satisfy the 
Court that the charges were sufficiently specific. Dr. Jun- 
kin explained his reasons for the omission of that term. He 
said the use of the term heresy was apt to excite terrific appa- 
ritions in the minds of some. In former times heretics had 
been burned, and people still associate the name heretic 
with the dungeon, the rack, the gibbet, and the stake. It 
was therefore calculated to excite unjust odium, both against 
an accused person and his accuser. He said he was re- 
solved from the first to avoid all language that was calcu- 
lated to excite improper feelings. Besides, the word heresy 
had no well-defined idea attached to it. It is difficult to 
define it ; and no two would, perhaps, agree in a definition. 
For these and other reasons which he gave, he had avoided 
that odious and indefinite term. 

Presbytery then directed Dr. Junkin to be admonished 
of the consequences of failure to prove charges against 
a gospel minister ; which was done by the Moderator. It 
25 



290 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

was then voted to put a copy of the charges into the hands 
of Mr. Barnes. He stated that he had, by permission of 
the Clerk, taken a copy when the paper was first presented 
(March 23). He was then asked whether he was ready for 
trial. In reply, he made a short address, in which he pre- 
sented some difficulties. 1. That the rule (Matt, xviii. 15, 
16), "If thy brother trespass against thee," etc., had not 
been complied with. 2. He found Dr. Junkin's name ap- 
pended to a document which he held in his hand, called 
The Act and Testimony, and he could not see how he 
could consistently prosecute before a court whose constitu- 
tional organization he therein calls in question. 3. The 
case was one of most fearful solemnity, and ought not to 
be gone through with hastily, but with great deliberation. 
4. His health had been in such a state as to compel him 
to omit some of his ordinary duties, and he could not be 
prepared in less than ten days, nor even then. 5. At the 
end of ten days Dr. Ely would be absent, as also Brothers 
Patterson and Grant and Dashiel, and in the absence of 
these influential members he would not wish the trial to 
proceed. He could see no reason for haste, declined im- 
mediate action, and hoped the trial would be postponed 
till June. 

In reply to these remarks, the Prosecutor said — 1. That 
the rule in Matt, xviii. 15, 16, had no reference to such a 
case as this whatever ; it relates to private personal injuries 
only. Now, there was no private personal offence between 
the parties, no wounded feeling, no fault; it was a. public 
concern, that could not possibly be hushed up by private 
explanation. 2. That his signature to the Act and Testimony 
had nothing to do with the case. He was willing to prose- 
cute before this court — that was a sufficient recognition of 
its jurisdiction, but said nothing about the regularity of its 
organization. A foreigner, who prosecutes before a Court of 
the United States, only concedes its jurisdiction, expressing 



POSTPONEMENT OF THE TRIAL. 



291 



no opinion about its original organization. 3. The impor- 
tance of the matter was a reason why there should be no 
unnecessary delay. The object was, Peace through Union 
in the Truth, and delay would only keep the community 
longer in a state of agitation ; had he not hoped the case 
would have been issued before the General Assembly, he 
would not have brought the matter up at this time. He 
deprecated a whole year of paper war, which must follow 
if the case is not now tried. 

Mr. Bradford, Ruling Elder, also argued strongly for 
immediate action, but in vain. The trial was postponed 
until the 30th of June, at nine o'clock a.m.* 

It is not just to ascribe to men motives which they would 
perhaps disavow ; and the writer has no disposition to do 
so. All he can do is to state facts, and let impartial 
readers put their own construction upon them. It is a fact, 
that, at the time, other reasons for the postponement of 
this trial were very generally supposed to have influenced 
the Presbytery. One reason attributed at the time, was 
the unwillingness to permit the case to reach the next 
General Assembly, which the Presbytery feared might 
prove not to be of the same complexion as the last. An- 
other object was to delay a decision until the fate of the 
Synod of Delaware, and of the Elective Affinity principle, 
could be known. 

Mr. Barnes having, in the course of his remarks, read 
from the Minutes of the General Assembly of 1824, p. 
219, and assumed an observation there made about the 
definiteness of charges to be a rule, and having intimated 
his purpose to insist upon that, the Prosecutor transmitted 
to him a full series of references to the pages of his book, 
that would be quoted on the trial, and of the parts of the 
Standards violated by them. Thus the indictment con- 

* Vindication, pp. x.-xiv. ; also Minutes of the Presbytery. 



292 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

tained not only the offences charged, but the proof and 
the law also. The letter containing this list was dated 
April nth. 

Such is the history of this case, up to the time the day 
of trial was fixed, by which it appears that Mr. Barnes had 
a copy of the charges and references to the proofs three 
months and eight days before the trial, and that the errors 
alleged against him were pointed out, the law indicated, 
and the proof presented, eighty days before trial. These 
facts show the laborious pains taken by the Prosecutor to 
give to Mr. Barnes every opportunity for making good his 
defence. 

A short time previous to the day appointed for the trial, 
the Prosecutor learned that it was probable no trial would 
take place, and that, as the General Assembly had pros- 
pectively dissolved the Synod of Delaware, and inaugu- 
rated other reforms sought by the signers of the Act and 
Testimony, the objection to the charges on account of the 
omission of the word heresy was to be revived, and the 
case dismissed on the grounds of informality. There was 
thus a likelihood that Mr. Barnes would be placed in the 
position of one standing ready for trial, and the Presbytery 
ready to try him, but, because of the Prosecutor's failure to 
charge heresy or any specific crime, the case was to be 
estopped. The wonder was circulated that a man of Dr. 
Junkin's acuteness of mind would make such a blunder, 
and it was charitably ascribed to inadvertence. 

Of all this the Prosecutor was apprised before the day 
of trial came, and was not surprised when the facts proved 
the accuracy of this information. The effort was made. 
The details of discussion need not be recorded. It will 
be enough to say that the objection was again raised by 
Mr. Barnes and his friends, that the charges lacked pre- 
ciseness, that no crime was charged, etc. The Rev. James 
Patterson was especially earnest in urging that it was hard 



HESITATION TO TRY. 



293 



to try a man for nothing, — that no specific charge of 
heresy was made. But "that if Brother Barnes was will- 
ing to go on at such great disadvantage, he would throw no 
obstacle in the way. ' ' This unfortunate remark placed Mr. 
Barnes in the dilemma of either consenting to go on, or of 
refusing to be tried upon the charges as presented. He 
did neither, but said this was a question for his brethren 
to decide, and he threw its decision upon them. If they 
deemed it fair and just that he should be tried without any 
specific charge of crime or heresy, he was ready. This was 
understood; and Mr. Patterson moved to permit the Pro- 
secutor to take back his charges and amend them, or the 
Presbytery would not go on with the trial. The motion 
was passed, and Dr. Junkin was asked to comply. This he 
declined to do, knowing that then it would be a new Bill, 
and Mr. Barnes would be entitled to his ten days' delay 
again. He, at the same time, again stated his objections 
to using the term, adding that, in his view, the things 
charged amounted to heresy. 

Thus the case was about to be arrested, agreeably to his 
previous information. The Presbytery were proceeding to 
other business, and Dr. Junkin rolled up his papers to take 
leave of the court. Before going out, however, he wrote 
upon a slip of paper the query, "After charges are received, 
admitted to lie, and a day appointed for trial, is it com- 
petent for the court to compel the Prosecutor to change his 
Bill of charges, and to dismiss the case if he refuse?" He 
handed this to Dr. Ely; who wrote, "I think not," and 
handed it back. It was passed to Mr. (now Dr.) Board- 
man, who nodded assent; then to Mr. Thomas Bradford, an 
elder and an eminent lawyer. He also assented, and, after 
a few minutes, arose and invited the Presbytery to consider 
the position in which they had placed themselves and Mr. 
Barnes by the resolution passed. Mr. Bradford recapitu- 
25* . 



294 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

lated the facts: "Some three months ago, Dr. Junkin 
tabled these charges ; the churches know it ; the world 
knows it. He has come to attend to the prosecution and 
proof of the charges. He is just about to depart, after having 
been refused an opportunity to substantiate them. Has he 
shrunk from the trial ? No ; he desires to go on — yet there is 
no trial. Why? On whom rests the blame of failure? The 
public will ask this question. It must be answered. Who 
prevented the trial ? Not Dr. Junkin. He stands ready to 
prove, as he says, the charges he has made. The public will 
think that either the Presbytery, or Brother Barnes, or both, 
arrested the trial. Did the latter, it will be asked, demand a 
trial, and the Presbytery refuse ? Where does this place the 
Presbytery? Or why did Mr. Barnes not insist on a trial? 
Ought any man to consent to lie under such charges? If I 
were in Mr. Barnes' place, I would demand a trial, and if 
there is none, I would dread the impression on the public 
mind." Dr. Ely presented the same views, and the result 
was a reconsideration, and a resolution to go on with 
the trial. Such are the historic facts ; no comment is 
added. 

After the arguments of the parties had been fully heard, 
and the roll called, a Committee was appointed to prepare 
a minute, expressive of the judgment of the Court, and a 
recess taken till three o'clock p.m. A few minutes before 
that hour, Dr. Junkin met the Moderator of the Presbytery 
near the church, and inquired of him to which Synod his 
Appeal should be carried, or, in other words, whether the 
Synod of Delaware would ever meet again. He replied 
that it never would, because the time to which it stood ad- 
journed was later than that to which the Synod of Phila- 
delphia stood adjourned, and the Synod of Delaware was 
to be dissolved "at and after" that date. Dr. Junkin also 
inquired whether it would not be better to take the Appeal 
directly to the Assembly. The Moderator promptly said 



ACQUITTAL OF MR. BARNES. 295 

that it would be better, and promised to favor that view 
of the case in the Presbytery. 

In the afternoon session, Dr. Junkin proposed to the 
Presbytery to take his Appeal direct to the General As- 
sembly. To which Mr. Barnes objected, stating his desire 
that the business should take the regular constitutional 
steps. Dr. Junkin then asked to be informed whether the 
Appeal would go to the Synod of Delaware — would that 
body ever meet again ? To this inquiry a number of voices 
responded, No ! it cannot meet, it will be dissolved before 
the day to which it stands adjourned. "Then," said he, 
" the Appeal must be to the Synod of Philadelphia." To 
this there was no official, formal assent by act of the body; 
but a real, well-understood, and generally expressed acqui- 
escence. So his Appeal was taken to the Synod of Phila- 
delphia. 

The decision of the Presbytery, as was expected by all, 
was in acquittal of Mr. Barnes. They judged him " not to 
be guilty of teaching or holding any heresy or erroneous 
doctrine, contrary to the Word of God and our Standards." 

The minute adopted assigns ten lengthy reasons for this 
judgment ; in which reasons they reargue the case for the 
accused, and endeavor to reconcile the language he em- 
ploys in his Notes on Romans with the Standards of the 
church and with their views of the Scripture. 

After stating these reasons, the minute concludes as 
follows : 

"The Presbytery therefore judge, that the charges have 
not been maintained, and ought to be dismissed, and do 
acquit Mr. Barnes of having taught, in his Notes on the 
Romans, any dangerous errors or heresies, contrary to the 
Word of God and our Standards. And they do moreover 
judge, that the Christian spirit manifested by the Prose- 
cutor during the progress of the trial, renders it inexpe- 
dient to inflict any censure on him ; and the Presbytery 
would express the hope, that the result of all will be to 



296 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

promote the peace of the church and further the gospel 
of Christ."* 

The sessions of the Presbytery, during this trial, were 
held in the Lecture-room of Mr. Barnes' church, where 
he usually met his people. Many of them were present, 
and by unmistakable signs expressed their sympathy for 
him, and their disapprobation of the prosecution. The 
congregation was at that time one of the most influential 
in the denomination ; and it is not difficult to conceive 
that, in such a place and circumstances, it required a high 
degree of moral courage to conduct this prosecution of an 
admired and caressed Pastor. It was a sacrifice of self, on 
the altar of truth, which compelled the admiration even of 
those who were opposed to the Prosecutor ; and the Court, 
whilst it acquitted the accused, unanimously bore testimony 
to the Christian spirit and bearing of Dr. Junkin. 

The minute of acquittal, though passed by a large ma- 
jority, was not unanimously passed. One minister in that 
Presbytery, and two elders, voted in the negative. There 
was, in that Presbytery, a young man, who had a short 
time before these events succeeded the Rev. Dr. McAuley 
in the pastorate of the Tenth Presbyterian Church, Phila- 
delphia. That church had been set off with others into 
the Second (Assembly's) Presbytery, and by this circum- 
stance, not by "Elective Affinity," had its young pastor 
become a member of the Presbytery that tried Mr. Barnes. 
A scholar mature beyond his years, with a mind clear, dis- 
criminating, dispassionate, and honest, with a heart instinct 
with the love of truth, and a conscience that shrunk from 
adopting a creed pro forma, whilst its essential truths were 
rejected, it could not be expected that he would consent to 
any act that he thought would compromise important truths 



Copy of Minute, attested by Thomas Eustace, Clerk. 



APPEAL. 



297 



of the Gospel. Nor did he. Whilst a judge, he listened 
with dignified and absorbed attention to the pleadings, and 
sought to secure fairness to both parties ; he was deterred, 
probably by his youth in the ministry, from taking an active 
part, until the time came for giving his opinion on the case. 
Then, although alone among the ministerial members, he 
sought to do his duty. With that dignified manner and 
calm, impressive eloquence which have made him one of 
the ornaments of the American pulpit, he gave his opinion 
in an able argument of three hours, that the Notes on 
Romans did contain evidence that ought to sustain most 
of the charges, and those the most serious ones; and 
he voted accordingly. Dr. Junkin has often since those 
trying days expressed to the writer, how grateful he was 
to God, that Henry A. Boardman was a member of that 
Court. That minister still lives, the beloved Pastor of the 
same church which he has served for almost forty years. 

Dr. Boardman was joined in desiring a judgment dif- 
ferent from that which was given, by two venerable and 
eminent elders of the church, the late Thomas Bradford 
and John Stille, Esqs. 

It was not expected, by either of the parties to the trial, 
that it would be terminated in the Presbytery. Indeed, 
the question of appeal was mooted before the trial began ; 
and, accordingly, Dr. Junkin gave notice, within the con- 
stitutional period, of his intention to appeal to the Synod 
of Philadelphia against the decision of the Presbytery, 
with his reasons therefor. The first sentences of this Appeal 
will give the reader an idea of the spirit with which Dr. 
Junkin conducted this business. It begins as follows : 

" Lafayette College, July 16, 1835. 
"To the Rev. John L. Grant, Moderator, a?id to the Rev- 
erend Second Presbytery of Philadelphia. 

" Rev. and dear Brother, — You are hereby officially 
informed, that I intend to appeal to the Synod of Philadel- 



298 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

phia, at its next meeting, to be held in the borough of 
York, on the last Wednesday of October next, against your 
recent decision, in the case of the Rev. Albert Barnes. 
This appeal is from the 'definitive sentence.' Its general 
ground is ' a manifestation of prejudice in the case, and 
mistake,' and consequent 'injustice in the decision.' 

"Allow me, before proceeding to specify the reasons 
which shut me up to the belief that the Court was pre- 
judiced, and did err in judgment, to say that I impeach no 
motives, — I charge no corrupt prejudice, — no intentional 
mistake or error upon any man. Men do often err under 
the purest motives, and are often powerfully prejudiced, 
whilst perfectly unconscious of it. With this single remark 
I proceed to detail the reasons why I appeal on the above- 
named grounds." 

He then gave ten reasons, which are too voluminous to 
transfer to these pages. The curious reader can find them 
in extenso in the volume called the Vindication, and also 
in the Appendix to the Minutes of the Synod of Philadel- 
phia for 1835, PP- 43~47- I' 1 tne same place, pp. 40-43, 
the decision of the Second Presbytery may be found. In 
brief, they were: — 1. Insisting upon the use of the term 
heresy by the Prosecutor — refusing to proceed unless he 
would insert that term — using that term themselves, in 
their speeches — and trying to excite odium against the 
Prosecutor, by reference to "persecution" and "the in- 
quisitorial toils," which one of the judges (Rev. John 
Smith) said the Prosecutor was employing. And they 
assumed heresy as the general charge. 2. Because the 
accused was not called upon to plead to each charge sepa- 
rately, nor to plead at all to the charge of teaching con- 
trary to the Standards.* 3. Because the talents of the 

* Mr. Barnes' special plea was as follows : " Until I am apprised whether 
these charges be of crime, heresy, or schism, I cannot answer in general 
whether I am guilty or not guilty. That some of the doctrines charged 
on me I hold, and some of them I do not hold ; but that I neither have 
taught, nor do I teach, anything, according to my best judgment, contrary 



REASONS FOE APPEAL. 



299 



accused, and the respectability of his congregation, were 
pleaded by some of the judges as a reason why he should 
not be condemned. "Never," said one of them, "let 
me be found condemning a man to whom God has given 
such mighty powers of mind, and a congregation so digni- 
fied and influential." 4. Because the Presbytery, in their 
decision, endorsed some of Mr. Barnes' errors, and made 
them their own, and therefore were biased in his favor. 
5. Because Mr. Barnes admitted that on the fifth, sixth, 
and seventh charges he denied the doctrine of the Stand- 
ards, and it is difficult to say whether the Presbytery do or 
not. Their sentence is equivocal. 6 and 7. Because of 
statements in their reasons which the Appellant affirms to 
be inaccurate. 8. Because one member of the court, at 
least, distinctly rejected the Standards of the church as a 
rule of judgment, and his speech was partly written. 9. 
Because the Presbytery took Mr. Barnes' present declara- 
tions as expository of the meaning of his language adduced 
by the Prosecutor in proof. They had no right to take the 
present views and gloss of a party at the bar as their correct 
meaning. This gloss could not accompany the book into 
all our families. 10. Because the decision of the Pres- 
bytery is not in accordance with the facts of the case as 
exhibited in the charges, the testimony, and the law. It 
is not a righteous decision. 

The history of the trial of Mr. Barnes has been given, 
up to the time of the Appeal to the Synod, with some de- 
gree of minuteness, for two reasons : first, because it is an 
important part of our ecclesiastical history, in the field of 
opinion, and of ecclesiastical conflict. It was indeed the 
hinge upon which turned the events of the next third of a 



to the Word of God ; nor do I deny any truths taught in the Word of God, 
as it is alleged that I do in the indictment now before this Presbytery." 
See " Defence," and Report in Presbyterian, July 9, 1835. 



3 oo LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

century. And second, because the subject of this memoir 
was much misrepresented and maligned at the time, both as 
regards his motives and spirit, and as regards his conduct 
of the case ; and it is due to an eminent man of God that 
the facts should be recorded for his vindication. Both 
the documentary facts and the testimony of Mr. Barnes 
and of the Presbytery attest that, in all this painful under- 
taking, Dr. Junkin bore himself with the meekness, the 
kindness, the " Christian spirit," and the calm, unquailing 
courage which become the champion of the truth. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

Trial of Mr. Barnes by the Synod of Philadelphia — Dissolution of Synod 
of Delaware — Its Presbyteries refuse to submit their Records — Synod 
demands the Records and Documents of the Second Presbytery in the 
Barnes Case— Presbytery refuse — Synod censures them for Contumacy 
— Mr. Barnes refuses to be tried without the Records which his Presby- 
tery withhold — Copies of the Papers in the Case presented and proved 
by Oath of Witnesses — Synod proceeds to issue the Appeal — Pleadings 
— Roll-Call — The Appeal of Dr. Junkin sustained — Mr. Barnes sus- 
pended—Submits — Appeals to the Assembly — Appeals to the Public in 
his "Defence" — "Persecution and Opposition" arise unto the Prosecutor 
— His Vindication. 

WHEN the Synod of Philadelphia met at York, on 
the 28th of October, 1835, the roll, including the 
eight Presbyteries at that moment constituting the Synod, 
was called ; and then the Moderator, Dr. Cuyler, read a 
certificate, signed by Dr. E. S. Ely as Stated Clerk of the 
General Assembly, attesting that "at and after the meeting 
of this Synod, in October next, the Synod of Delaware 
shall be dissolved, and the Presbyteries constituting the 
same shall be then and thereafter annexed to the Synod of 
Philadelphia, and that the latter Synod shall take such 
order," etc., reciting the directions of the Assembly. The 
Clerk then called the roll of the Presbyteries of Philadel- 
phia (Second), Wilmington, and Lewes, and forty-six per- 
sons answered to their names, and were enrolled as members 
of Synod, and thus became, by their own act and consent, 
liable to its lawful authority. 

On the afternoon of the second day of the sessions, the 
Judicial committee reported Dr. Junkin's Appeal as being 
in order, and recommended that it be taken up, and orderly 
26 ( 301 ) 



3 o2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

issued. The next morning the Synod took up the case, 
and the Moderator inquired for the records and documents 
of the Presbytery appealed from. In response to this, Dr. 
Ely read a paper, which, he said, had been adopted by the 
Second Presbytery of Philadelphia at a meeting, held in 
York, the preceding day, and since the meeting of the 
Synod. It was as follows : 

" Whereas, The General Assembly of our church dis- 
solved the Synod of Delaware at and after the meeting of 
the Synod of Philadelphia, which occurred yesterday ; 
whereas, The said Assembly passed no order for the trans- 
fer of the books, minutes, and unfinished proceedings of 
the Synod of Delaware and the Second Presbytery of Phila- 
delphia, then belonging to the same, to any other Synod 
or judicatory ; and whereas, It is utterly inconsistent with 
reason and the excellent Standards of our church that any 
Presbytery should be amenable to more than one Synod 
at the same time : therefore, 

"Resolved, That the Presbytery will and hereby does 
decline to submit its books, records, and proceedings, prior 
to this date, to the review and control of the Synod of 
Philadelphia, until the General Assembly shall take some 
order upon this subject. 

"A true extract from the minutes. 

"Geo. Duffield, Clerk." 

The Moderator of Synod then asked Dr. Junkin whether 
he was prepared to prosecute his Appeal. Dr. Junkin 
answered in the affirmative. Mr. Barnes was also asked 
if he was prepared, and replied that he came there fully 
prepared, and, so far as he was personally concerned, was 
ready for the trial. 

It was then, on motion, ordered that the Second Presby- 
tery (Assembly's) be directed to lay their records, in the 
case of Mr. Barnes, on the table of the Synod ; and that 
the Stated Clerk of the Synod forthwith put this order into 
the hands of the Moderator and Clerk of that Presbytery. 

Dr. Junkin then read a paper, which he desired might 



PROCEEDINGS AT SYNOD. 



3°3 



go upon the minutes of Synod. In this paper he stated, 
over his own signature, what has been recorded in the last 
chapter, that, at the close of the trial, he had proposed to 
appeal directly to the Assembly; that Mr. Barnes had 
objected ; that he (Dr. Junkin) had then inquired what 
Synod he should appeal to ; and had been promptly told, 
"To that of Philadelphia." 

The Second Presbytery had leave to withdraw to con- 
sider the order of the Synod, and, in the afternoon, pre- 
sented a paper, signed by the Clerk, refusing compliance 
with the order. Dr. Junkin presented a letter from the 
Stated Clerk of that Presbytery, which proved that the 
Presbytery expected the Appeal to be tried before this 
Synod. It is as follows : 

" Philadelphia, October 13, 1835. 
"Rev. George Junkin, D.D. 

"Dear Brother, — In accordance with the annexed 
resolution of the Presbytery, I have to request that you 
will cause to be deposited in my hands the written testi- 
mony, on your part, in the case of Mr. Barnes, — the charges 
I already have. As the meeting of Synod approaches, it 
is desirable to furnish it forthwith, that I may be enabled to 
send to Synod all the documents in the case. 
"With best wishes, etc., 

"Thomas Eustace. 
" Resolved, That the written charges and testimony of 
Dr. Junkin, and the written defence of Mr. Barnes, be 
preserved on the files of this Presbytery. 

"Attest, Thomas Eustace, 
"Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of Philadelphia."* 

A paper was then presented to Synod, considered by 
paragraphs, and adopted, in which the foregoing facts were 
set forth as proof of contumacious conduct on the part of 
the Assembly's Presbytery, and of a design to deceive the 
Appellant, and prevent him from having any appeal from 

* Minutes of Synod, pp. 10 to 13. 



304 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

their decision ; and upon these facts, and by the authority 
given in chapter vii. sec. iii. subsection 16, the Synod 

"Resolved, That, in the judgment of this Synod, the 
conduct of the (Assembly's) Second Presbytery of Phila- 
delphia, in all the premises, is obstinate, vexatious, unjust, 
uncandid, contumacious, and grossly disorderly. And in 
view of the facts, that the Presbytery had suppressed the 
records in the case of Mr. Barnes ; and the Synod, after 
due effort, had failed to obtain the records in the case ; 
that the original parties have declared their readiness for 
trial ; that there is accessible an attested copy of the sen- 
tence appealed from, and of the original evidence used in 
the trial, in the court below; that the Appellee's case could 
not therefore be prejudiced by the conduct of his Presby- 
tery; and that the cause of truth and the glory of God 
require the case to be issued ; the Synod 

"Resolved, To proceed to hear and dispose of the Appeal 
now pending." 

A solemn prayer was then offered, and the trial was 
commenced. The Appeal was read. A copy of the origi- 
nal charges was presented, and proven by the oath of Mr. 
Steel, who, having previously read them, had handed them 
to the Presbytery. A letter from the Stated Clerk of the 
Presbytery, proving their reception, was read.* At this 
juncture Mr. Barnes arose and made some remarks, and 
concluded by presenting the following paper : 

"When I was asked by the Moderator of the Synod this 
morning whether I was prepared for trial, I stated that 
before and since the trial before the Presbytery, I had made 
all the preparation which my time would permit, and that 
so far as I am personally concerned I was prepared for trial. 
I still say that, in the same sense, I am now ready. I did 
not, however, intend that I was ready to submit to an un- 
constitutional trial. In the present state of affairs I feel 
bound to inform the Synod that if an attested record of 

* Minutes of Synod, pp. 14, 15. 



PROCEEDINGS AT SYNOD. 



3°5 



the proceedings in my case cannot be produced, I must de- 
cline all further proceedings before the Synod in the case ; 
my Presbytery having judged that it is their constitutional 
right to withhold the record. And the trial, if it proceed, 
whatever might be the issue, whether in my vindication or 
condemnation, must be an unconstitutional one. (Book 
of Dis., chap, iv.) Such a trial I hereby respectfully de- 
cline. I feel, however, desirous of a constitutional trial on 
the charges alleged against me, whenever the same can be 
legally had, before the proper tribunal."* 

Such is the documentary history of this unprecedented 
proceeding. And in order that the reader may form a 
just estimate of the conduct of the actors in it, another 
fact or two ought to be noted. When Dr. Ely presented 
the minute of his Presbytery, refusing to submit their 
records, the Rev. Dr. John Breckenridge asked him, "If 
it was not he that drafted the minute of the Assembly 
in which the words ' at and after' were employed, thus 
leading that body to let the Synod of Delaware continue 
for a time, instead of instantly dissolving it, as was pro- 
posed ? And whether it was compatible with honor and 
fair dealing for Dr. Ely to use that trap, of his own con- 
struction, to bar a fair trial?" 

Dr. Ely replied, "that he did draft the minute; but 
as the Assembly did not order the Presbytery to put their 
records into the hands of this Synod, he was thankful a 
slip had been permitted in legislation ; and thus ' in the 
providence of God' the way was opened for this action 
of his Presbytery." 

Let it be remembered, in connection with this, that, as 
Mr. Eustace's letter above proves, the Presbytery had not 
so late as the 13th inst. — fifteen days before the meeting 
of Synod — thought of the course now pursued ; and that it 
was resolved upon only after the Synod met ; and, in view 



Minutes of Synod, pp. 15, 16. 
26* 



306 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

of these facts, no mind can resist the conclusion that this 
expedient was resorted to at that late date for the purpose 
of avoiding a trial. 

It is an old established maxim of the law, that " no party 
can take the benefit of his own wrong." Whether that 
maxim was violated, in the conduct of the Assembly's 
Presbytery, candid minds will judge. It ought to be 
stated that these things were done at a time when men 
were much excited with the spirit of their respective par- 
ties. The public mind was agitated. Good men were 
under the influence of the heat which a struggle for the 
supremacy is apt to produce. Sharp things were said on 
both sides ; and if the one side was conscious of an honest 
purpose to vindicate the Standards and defend the truth, 
this fact did not always restrain them from those tones of 
censure that provoke retort, and which sometimes tempt 
zealous partisans to resort to expedients which their own 
judgment, in cooler times, would not approve. It should 
ever be remembered, too, in vindication of religion, that 
if her votaries sometimes betray a good deal of human 
frailty, it is the fault of nature, not of grace. 

Although the Assembly's Presbytery withheld its records, 
and declined taking any part in the trial, some of its mem- 
bers participated in the incidental debate, and discussions 
sometimes waxed warm. It is the testimony of all parties, 
however, that Dr. Junkin maintained, throughout these 
trying scenes, entire self-possession, and calmly yet firmly 
did his duty as Prosecutor of his appeal. 

The Synod proceeded with the trial, which occupied five 
days ; after which the Appeal of Dr. Junkin was sustained, 
and the decision of the Presbytery reversed, by a vote of 
Ayes 142, Nays 16, Non Liquets 17, and Excused 1. A 
committee was appointed to prepare a minute expressive 
of the sense of the Synod in this case. This committee 
subsequently made a report, in which they recited the his- 



APPEAL OF MR. BARNES. 



3°7 



tory of the case as it was issued before Synod, and pro- 
posed, for the adoption of the Synod, three resolutions ; 
the substance of which was — i . That in view of the 
proof, the Appeal be sustained, and the decision of the 
Presbytery reversed, as contrary to truth and righteousness ; 
2. That some of the errors charged and proved are fun- 
damental ; 3. " That the said Albert Barnes be, and he 
hereby is, suspended from the exercise of all the functions 
proper to the gospel ministry, until he shall retract the 
errors hereby condemned and give satisfactory evidence 
of repentance." 

Dr. John Breckenridge moved as a substitute for the 
third resolution, one proposing, at this stage, to refer the 
case to the next General Assembly, in order to avoid even 
the appearance of rashness or injustice. This was negatived, 
and the whole paper was passed by 116 to 31. 

Various opinions were expressed at the time, and various 
opinions would still be formed by different persons, in re- 
gard to the wisdom and expediency of the action of the 
Synod in trying the case under such circumstances. Per- 
haps it would have been wiser to have referred the case, 
under the motion of Dr. John Breckenridge ; but, on ac- 
count of the contumacy of the Court below, most of the 
Old School thought that the Synod did right in not per- 
mitting discipline to fail in their hands. 

Although Mr. Barnes had not submitted to a trial in the 
Synod, and, therefore, was not technically entitled to an 
appeal (Book of Dis., chap. vii. sec. iii., subsec. ii.), yet 
he gave notice of appeal, and carried his case to the Gen- 
eral Assembly. Meanwhile he submitted to the sentence 
of the Synod ; and a great deal of sympathy was excited 
in his behalf by appeals to the public, oral and written. 
The press in the interest of the New Theology teemed 
with censures of the Synod, and expressions of sympathy 
with the suspended minister ; and the accuser, although 



308 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

acquitted of any evil motive or unchristian spirit, both by 
the testimony of Mr. Barnes himself and of his Presby- 
tery, was exposed to much odium, from those who leaned 
towards laxity of doctrine or discipline, or who were hostile 
to the truth as held by our church. 

Soon after the close of the trial before the Second Pres- 
bytery, Dr. Junkin was applied to, by a Publisher, for a 
report of his charges, proofs, and arguments for publication. 
Mr. Barnes had consented to give his side, and expressed 
a wish (so the publisher said), that the Prosecutor should 
do so likewise. But Dr. Junkin refused to do so ; and as- 
signed as reasons for his refusal, that it never was designed 
that the case should stop short of the Assembly — that nothing 
should be done by either party to prejudice the courts 
above, by ex-parte statements, and the agitation of the 
public mind by premature publications ; and that in order 
to the triumph of truth " the pivot, on which the balance 
of judgment turns, must be kept free from the rust of 
envy, or the rancid, dust-thickened oil of prejudice. 
This latter is best effected by cleansing, and a drop of the 
pure oil of charity." . . . "We, the parties, stand at 
the judicial bar ; to that we have appealed ; and I con- 
ceive that we have no right, during the pending of our own 
cause there, to litigate at another bar. We can have no 
right to a trial at two different tribunals, at the same time, 
and for the same thing." 

Nevertheless, Mr. Barnes' "Defence" was published, 
in a volume of considerable bulk, and widely disseminated. 
This fact Dr. Junkin mentions, in the preliminary note to 
his own argument, which he published some months after 
the appearance of Mr. Barnes' book, in a small volume 
of one hundred and sixty pages, called "The Vindica- 
tion." The fact that Mr. Barnes and his friends had 
gone before the public, is adduced in justification of the 
printing of the history of the case by Dr. Junkin, along 



"THE DEFENCE ■> AND "THE VINDICATION:' 309 

with his argument. His words, in the preliminary note, 
are : 

" Why publish your argument in the case of Mr. Barnes? 
I answer, Because new rights result from new wrongs. . 
Mr. Barnes has committed what I suppose to be a 
wrong, in refusing to appear before the bar of his own 
choice, and then preferring his plea before a tribunal un- 
known to our ecclesiastical constitution ; and out of his 
wrong grows my right. He has arraigned me at the tribu- 
nal of the people; not, you will observe, of God's people 
only, but of the world at large. His ' Defence' is made 
at a bar where no bill had been preferred against him, until 
after he there appeared. Not satisfied with the legitimate 
courts of Christ's house, he has actually spread before the 
world, in tens of thousands of copies, his entire written 
argument. Will not the reader justify me, in sending my 
argument for the truth after this 'defence? though it may 
lag far behind ? Justice, wherever her throne be, is the 
same in her essential character and indispensable requisites. 
Whether in the popular bosom or on the supreme bench, 
she must have her balances and her facts. In the prema- 
ture effort of my brother, she has had her scales thrown, 
indeed, into a very forbidding attitude ; the one pressed to 
the ground, with its ponderous load, the other empty. 
This, however, will soon be rectified. Her hand is even 
now lowering to restore the empty scale to its just equi- 
poise, and receive my argument. When this is fairly done, 
let her hand rise, and the Church of God, yea, the world 
itself, judge where abides eternal truth !"* 

But, although his argument may have been put into the 
scale, and the hand of Justice raised, historic truth re- 
quires the fact to be noted, that, so far as the tribunal of 
the great public was concerned, Dr. Junkin stood before 
it at a great disadvantage. Not only did the "Defence' 1 '' 
precede his "Vindication" several months, before that 
tribunal, but, on account of the fact that Mr. Barnes' 



* Vindication, p. 3. 



3io LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

wealthy congregation, and other sympathizers, furnished 
funds for spreading his "Defence" broadcast over the 
land, thousands read the " Defence" who never saw the 
"Vindication." Dr. Junkin had no wealthy congregation, 
no organized ecclesiastical influence, to sustain him in his 
contest for what he verily believed to be God's truth. His 
own funds, which were not ample, were locked up in the 
College enterprise, which he was also sustaining single- 
handed ; and if the Lord was not on his side, the contest 
was indeed unequal. It is true, no doubt, that he was up- 
held by the sympathies and the prayers of those who be- 
lieved him to be sacrificing in the cause of truth ; but even 
some of them had not the moral courage to face, with firm- 
ness, the cry of persecution and tide of obloquy which 
were raised against the man who, being the "President 
of a College" and "a member of another Presbytery," 
would begin a prosecution against the popular and cherished 
Pastor of so wealthy and influential a church. The 
"Defence," too, was of course written from a party stand- 
point, and at a moment of extreme irritation and excite- 
ment. It could not be expected to spare Dr. Junkin, 
but, on the contrary, to place him and his cause as 
much in the wrong as an ex-parte statement of the facts 
could effect ; and it fell upon the public ear at a time when 
not only the New School portion of the church, but the 
undiscriminating and indifferent masses, were under the 
influence of that sympathy which always gathers around 
the condemned. The man who had been suspended from 
the ministry was in repute for talents, scholarship, and 
great literary industry. He was amiable, pious, and had 
pulpit powers which were solid and attractive. The oppo- 
sition which he encountered, upon his first coming to 
Philadelphia, had not only aroused the friendly zeal of his 
immediate congregation, but had drawn to him a measure 
of public attention which many years in the quiet duties 



POPULAR SYMPATHY FOR MR. BARNES. 



3" 



of a pastorate might not have won. His Notes on the 
Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles were, with the excep- 
tion of a few passages, which indicated, without very ex- 
plicitly stating, his peculiar views of theology, useful books, 
and their sale and circulation were doubtless increased 
by the very opposition which had been made to those 
views. So that, both as a Pastor and an Author, he was, 
probably, more widely known than, in so short a time, he 
would have become in other circumstances. There was 
so much of real good mixed with what his Old School 
brethren seriously deplored as evil, that the general public, 
unaccustomed to consider systems of doctrine, failed to see, 
or, at least, to acknowledge, anything but the good. And 
when such a man, and in such circumstances, was sus- 
pended from the Gospel ministry, his voice silenced, his 
pulpit left temporarily vacant, and his people bereft of the 
services of their Pastor, the public ear was startled by the 
tidings, the public heart was roused, and it was natural, 
and to be expected, that all of the Christian community, 
who did not receive the distinctive doctrines of grace as laid 
down in the Presbyterian standards, would throw their 
sympathies around the silenced minister. Of course this 
tendency would be also strong among the people of the 
world, and the popular tide would set against the Synod 
which had applied discipline, and the man who had produced 
the proof upon which it was done. The publication of 
Mr. Barnes' ex-parte defence would not, of course, as- 
suage this excited sea; and, whilst the Old School and 
many of the discerning minds in other evangelical churches 
sustained the decision of the Synod, the popular tones that 
seemed the loudest, for a time at least, were those of dis- 
approval. 

There is a martyrdom almost as hard to endure as that 
of the stake. To a mind as sensitive and deep in its 
emotional nature as was Dr. Junkin's, yet not possessing 



312 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

his indomitable loyalty to principle, and his strong faith in 
God, the assaults made upon his course would have been 
appalling. It was in vain Mr. Barnes himself had closed 
his defence with a most explicit and emphatic testimony to 
the Christian spirit and the purity of motive which he 
believed had moved his Prosecutor;* in vain the Second 
Presbytery had officially recorded the same declaration ; in 
vain all impartial persons, who witnessed the trials, ex- 
pressed admiration of the calmness, the patience, the kind- 
ness, the solemnity, as well as the ability, with which he 
conducted them, before the Presbytery and Synod — he 
was in the attitude of a successful Prosecutor, and must, 
therefore, be a man to be spoken against. It is due to 
truth, and is illustrative of the Christian spirit of both Mr. 
Barnes and Dr. Junkin, to add, that, so far as known, there 
never was at any time any feeling of personal unkindness, 
much less of hostility, between them. 

Dr. Junkin may have felt, doubtless did feel keenly, all 
this, but he never betrayed any impatience or resentment. 
And when his friends expressed, as they sometimes did, 
indignation at the misrepresentations of his motives, spirit, 
and conduct, he would rarely say more than to quote some 
passage from the Word of God, such as, " He that be- 
lieveth shall not make haste," or, "The lying tongue is 
but for a moment." 

The opposition of the unthinking world he could pity, 
without being discouraged by it ; it was to be expected. 
The censure of the avowed adherents or protectors of the 
New Theology, he had anticipated, and was not surprised, 
nor much troubled, when it came. But when, as was some- 
times the case, he was denounced by orthodox men under 
the influence of a morbid spirit of compromise, or because 
they had not the nerve to withstand the popular outcry, he 

* See page 315. 



OPPOSITION TO LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 



3*3 



seemed more grieved. No reader unacquainted with the 
details of this trying period of Dr. Junkin's history, can 
appreciate the sacrifices he made for the truth's sake, nor 
the amount of opposition he had to endure. 

In a few instances, ministers, professing to be sound in 
the faith, took their sons from Lafayette College, and sent 
them elsewhere, because they would not be in any way 
identified with the Prosecutor of Mr. Barnes. Direct 
efforts were also made, sometimes by ministers, sometimes 
by laymen, to dissuade students from coming to the College, 
and to induce those already there to leave. 

A case, which affected Dr. Junkin more, perhaps, than 
any other, because it was not only a personal thrust, but 
struck at his beloved College, may be stated as succinctly 
as in any other words, by copying an article from the 
Presbyterian of February 5th, 1836, signed "A Member of 
the Synod of New Jersey." We withhold the name of 
the eminent pastor alluded to ; for whilst it is our duty, 
as a faithful biographer, to record the trials and sufferings 
of the subject of our memoir, we do not wish needlessly 
to put on record the conduct of others which we disap- 
prove, in connection with their names. The best men 
have their weaknesses, and one of the most difficult things 
to do, in this land where public opinion is so puissant, is 
to withstand it, when it is wrong. 

(From The Presbyterian.') 

l - Mr. Editor, — It was with surprise, and grief for the 
writer, whose name I have respected and whose person 
I still love, that I read, in the N. Y. Observer, of January 
30th, the following paragraph : 

" 'Messrs. Editors, — I have understood that a recent 
paragraph in the " Philadelphian" animadverts with some 
severity upon me, for having given my name recommend- 
ing the college under the care of the Rev. Dr. Junkin. I 
owe it to myself to state, that I did this very soon after my 
27 



3 i 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

return from Europe, and before I had become acquainted 
with the course Dr. Junkin pursued in his prosecution of 
the Rev. Mr. Barnes. On reading the narrative of that 
trial, as published in the N. Y. Observer, I wrote to Dr. 
Junkin, requesting him to erase my name from the list of 
recommendations to his Seminary. 

" ' Yours, etc. 



"I say, Mr. Editor, I was surprised and grieved, upon 
reading a communication which, in itself, places the writer 
of it in so unenviable a light before a discerning public. 

Can it be that , D.D., could be induced to take 

such a step by any animadversions of the Philadelphia^, ft i 
I, for one, would not have believed that that eminent min- 
ister of Christ could be driven in any direction by any- 
thing that could proceed from such a source, had he not 
confessed it in the above paragraph. 

"But, with regard to the statement itself. He says he 
put his name to the recommendation of Lafayette College 
soon after his return from Europe, and before he had be- 
come acquainted with the course Dr. J. pursued in his 
prosecution of Mr. Barnes. Is it not to be regretted that 

Dr. should put his name to a paper characterized by 

such frankness and distinctness of avowal, as the one in 
question, without due consideration? Can he plead that 
he was ignorant of its contents? That he will not do. 
Was he ignorant of the fact that Dr. Junkin was the pros- 
ecutor of Mr. Barnes? This he does not pretend. He 
therefore confesses to rashness, and his plea for withdraw- 
ing his name is, that he does not approve of Dr. J.'s course 
in Mr. B.'s prosecution. 

" Now, there are two or three things in this plea which I 
hope a candid public will consider : 1. The evidence, upon 

which Dr. made up his mind to make this effort to 

crush Dr. Junkin and Lafayette College, is, by his own 
confession, contained in the reports of the trial of Mr. B. 
in the Observer, prior to the date of his card. Now, the 
readers of the Observer know that, for reasons best known 
to its Editors, that paper has never yet published a large 
part, and the most important part, of the evidence in the 
case, viz., Dr. Junkin's proofs and pleadings. These have 



DEFENCE OF DR. JUNKIN. 3,5 

never yet been published. And yet, upon this partial evi- 
dence, and before he had heard the whole narrative, Dr. 

condemns Dr. Junkin, and lends the weight of his 

name to blast him and the prospects of the infant but 
flourishing institution over which he presides ! 

"And Dr. does this with Mr. Barnes' own testi- 
mony before him, in which, at the close of his published 
' Defence,' he declares as follows: ' I have only to add that 
I cherish no unkind feelings towards my prosecutor. I 
charge upon him no improper motives. I delight to add 
my humble testimony, in accordance with the feelings of 
all who have heard the trial, to his Christian spirit ; and I 
rejoice to close by saying, that my conviction of the piety 
and Christian temper of my prosecutor has been aug- 
menting throughout the entire prosecution.' Nor has 

Dr. read, in the N. Y. Observer, nor in any other 

print, any proof that a different spirit was manifested by 
the prosecutor before the Synod. 

" 2. But besides judging from partial evidence, and con- 
trary to the testimony of Mr. Barnes, Dr. condemns 

Dr. Junkin unheard. He gave him no opportunity of ex- 
plaining his course. 

"3. This public censure upon Dr. Junkin's character 
and office, as the head of a literary institute, was unpro- 
voked and uncalled for. The letter of recommendation 
was addressed to private individuals of wealth and benevo- 
lence. It was not a public document. But this renuncia- 
tion and attack is made public, and circulated throughout 
the whole church. 

"4. This plea shows to the whole church where Dr. 

stands. He, as a Presbyter, has prejudged a case pending 
before the supreme court of the whole church. 

"If the public knew Dr. Junkin as well as does the 
writer of this communication ; if they knew what sacrifices 
of personal comfort and property, what heart-sinking 
self-denial and hardships he has encountered for the sake 
of advancing the cause of truth and education ; if they 
were aware of the fact, too, that he was at first induced to 
leave the retired and peaceful labors of the pastorate, and 
to enter the arduous field in which he is now toiling, by 
the very men who now persecute him, and strive to thwart 
his aims and tear away his friends, I am persuaded that 



3 i 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

with one voice the course of the Philadelphian would 

be pronounced cruel, and that of Dr. unkind and 

unjust. 

"A Member of the Synod of New Jersey." 

In addition to the uncontradicted testimony of Mr. 
Barnes, given at the close of his "Defence," and that of 
the Presbytery officially recorded in their judgment, others 
bore public testimony at the time to the Christian temper 
and gentlemanly propriety with which Dr. Junkin bore him- 
self amid these exciting scenes. Says The Presbyterian : 

"In reviewing the manner in which the prosecution was 
conducted, we are constrained to express our approbation 
of the Christian courtesy and unruffled temper displayed 
by Dr. Junkin; we believe this praise will be accorded to 
him by all parties. We pretend not to follow him in his 
argument, which was so well sustained by the Holy Scrip- 
tures and the formularies of the church, and occupied so 
many hours. But we hope he may be induced to prepare 
his notes for publication. On the part of the defendant 

the case was conducted with ingenuity and ability 

We sincerely hope it will be published, . . . and we much 
mistake if, in the view of intelligent theological readers, 
it does not confirm, rather than refute, the charges." 

The foregoing will sufficiently illustrate the points which 
the biographer desires to make plain: i. That upon the 
supposition that discipline, for alleged departures from the 
written Standards of the church, is to be maintained at all, 
Dr. Junkin did, in this case, nothing more than was the 
duly of a man who had, at his ordination, solemnly prom- 
ised " to be zealous and faithful in maintaining the truths 
of the gospel, and the purity and peaee of the church, what- 
ever persecution or opposition may arise unto you on that 
account." (See Form of Government, chap, xv.) 

2. That the "persecution and opposition that arose unto 
him," especially so far as it came from his brethren, whose 



FRIENDLY SYMPATHY. 



317 



consciences rested under the same vow, was unreasonable, 
undeserved, unjust, and unkind. 

3. That that "persecution and opposition" had no just 
grounds in the manner, motives, or spirit with which he 
conducted the Barnes trial, but grew out of the spirit of 
party, or the timidity of good men, who sometimes are 
given up to fear popular clamor more than they should. 

It must not be supposed that, amid the above-mentioned 
trials, Dr. Junkin was left alone, and uncheered by the 
sympathies of the friends of truth. If names of influence 
were arrayed against him and his cause, those of equal 
weight were among his friends. Such men as Ashbel 
Green, Joseph McElroy, W. W. Phillips, Robert J. Breck- 
enridge, John Breckenridge, John M. Krebs, Wm. M. 
Engles, S. G. Winchester, Wm. L. McCalla, David Elliott, 
Elisha P. Swift, Joshua L. Wilson, James Hoge, David 
McKinney, Wm. Latta, and scores of others distinguished 
among the clergy ; and James Lenox, John Stille, Archi- 
bald George, Ephraim Banks, James Kennedy, Thos. 
McKeen, Judge Ewing, and hundreds more of the Elders, 
proved themselves worthy of this trying crisis in their 
church's history. 

27* 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

Assembly of 1836 — Its Characteristics — Old School in the Majority at the 
Start — New School afterwards — Large Body — The Barnes Trial — Appel- 
lant attentively heard — Contrary Treatment of Prosecutor — Incidents — 
Dr. Junkin's Pleadings — Difficulties of his Position — His Reasons for 
assuming it — Mr. Barnes' Objections answered — Mr. Barnes' Rule of 
Interpretation — Its Unsoundness — The Stranded Steamboat — Motives — 
Mr. Barnes' Appeal sustained — Causes of this Result — Protests and 
Answers — Startling Inconsistencies — Prospects of Peace — Why defeated 
— Dr. Beecher's Proposal and Assignation — Not met, and why — Breach 
of Contract with Western Foreign Missionary Society — Attempted Revo- 
lution of Board of Education — Conferences — Dr. Junkin returns, to 
Easton. 

THE General Assembly of 1836, as the preceding one 
had done, met in the city of Pittsburg. No doubt, 
both parties in the church had exerted themselves to secure 
a majority. The orthodox party, including those who 
adhered to the position assumed by Princeton, were in a 
small majority at the opening of the Assembly. The Rev. 
John Witherspoon, D.D., of South Carolina, who had been 
in the Act and Testimony Convention the year before, was 
chosen Moderator. It was a large Assembly, numbering 
over two hundred and fifty. Many of the most prominent 
ministers and elders of the church were in commission. 
Dr. Phillips opened with a sermon. The prominent New 
School leaders, including many who, after the division, 
went back to Congregationalism, were in attendance. Dr. 
Peters was there; Dr. Beecher was in attendance, though 
not in commission ; Dr. Skinner, and others of the most 
learned and gifted of that party, were present. The great 
question, whether the New Theology, with its kindred dis- 
cipline and measures, was to be tolerated in the Presby- 
(3i8) 



APPELLANT A TTENTIVEL Y HEARD. 



3*9 



terian Church, was expected to be solved. Two prominent 
and representative men of their party, Mr. Barnes and Dr. 
Beecher, were expected to be on trial before that Assem- 
bly, and commissioners poured in from all parts of the land. 
Men's minds were on the stretch, and it was expected 
that the struggle would be earnest in proportion to the 
great issues involved. 

Mr. Barnes, having refused to submit to a trial before 
the court below, was not technically entitled to an appeal ; 
but his appeal was entertained and taken up early in the 
session. The large edifice of the First Presbyterian 
Church was crowded to its utmost capacity by eager spec- 
tators. 

Mr. Barnes, as the Appellant, was of course first heard in 
support of his reasons for appeal, and in defence of him- 
self against the charges. His argument was long, able, and 
ingenious, and delivered with a calm modesty of manner, 
that made a very favorable impression. He was heard with 
profound and fixed attention. No noise or other evidence 
that any of his judges were inattentive could be heard. 
The galleries, too, were perfectly orderly, no movement 
being observed, except occasionally a quiet exchange of 
look or whisper of gratulation between the speaker's 
friends, Vhen he made some good point in his argument, 
or some moving appeal ad fiofiulum. 

But when Dr. Junkin arose to speak, the scene imme- 
diately assumed a different aspect. The New School weekly 
paper had been distributed in the pews occupied by mem- 
bers of the Assembly, before the sessions of that day began ; 
and at the moment Dr. Junkin commenced his argument, a 
portion of the Assembly seemed to be simultaneously seized 
with an eager desire to become acquainted with the con- 
tents of that weekly. About a hundred of them were 
opened at the same time, and the voice of the speaker 
was, for awhile, quite drowned in the rustling of news- 



3 20 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

papers, whilst some of the judges appeared intent, not upon 
listening to him, but upon reading the news. 

The writer of these pages was sitting in the body of 
the church, immediately behind a member of the court, 
whom he did not know. He was a handsome man, of 
perhaps thirty years, and seemed to be especially impa- 
tient at the prospect of listening to an argument upon 
what, at the time, he believed to be the wrong side. Nor 
was he able to fix his eye with interest upon the newspaper 
which he held in his hand. Leaning forward to one of the 
judges, who sat in the pew before him, he engaged him 
in conversation, in sotto voce. Meanwhile the gallery lost 
its quietude, and portions of its occupants became sud- 
denly inspired with the spirit of conversation and of mirth ; 
and for a time it appeared unlikely that the Defendant in 
appeal would be able to make himself heard. Indignant 
at this marked departure from the proprieties of a court 
of Christ, and at the evident unfairness of hearing one and 
not the other of the parties at its bar, the writer took the 
liberty — perhaps unwarrantable — of saying in a whisper 
to the gentleman, who was conversing with another mem- 
ber of the court, "Young man, permit a stranger to re- 
mind you that you are a judge in a court of Jesus Christ, 
sitting in a very solemn and important case." He seemed 
startled, and demanded, "What do you mean, sir?" Not 
wishing an altercation there, no answer was returned ; and 
at that juncture a recess of ten minutes was moved, and 
there was a general retiring to the church-yard. Whilst 
there and conversing with a friend, the writer was ap- 
proached by the judge to whom he had whispered, who 
said, "I demand what you meant, when you addressed me 
in the house?" " I meant just what I said, sir." "I de- 
mand an explanation, for I consider you have acted in an 
ungentlemanly way." The conversation with the friend 
was continued without noticing this last remark, but was 



INCIDENTS. 



321 



somewhat harassed by demands from the young judge for 
an explanation. " I can have no further conversation with 
you, sir, until you recall the offensive term ' ungentle- 
manly,' which you have used." "Well, it was an im- 
proper term, and I recall it." "Then, I will hear you." 
" I wish to know what you meant, by your remark in the 
house?" "I meant this, sir: so long as the Appellant was 
presenting his case I noticed, with pleasure, that the court 
gave fixed and decorous attention to his plea, as was their 
duty. The moment Dr. Junkin rose to speak, his voice 
was drowned in a storm of rustling of newspapers, and 
a part of the court seemed to withdraw all attention from 
the speaker ; and I noticed that you, sir, not only with- 
drew your own attention, but engaged another judge in 
conversation." " I &ave read Dr. Junkin's Vindication, 
sir, and did not think it necessary, on that account, to 
listen so closely to his argument." " You are not to pre- 
sume that he will have nothing to say, in his present plea, 
except what is in that pamphlet ; and I thought it unfair 
that you and others were refusing to hear him ; and as I 
saw that, like myself, you are a young man, I took the 
liberty of giving the hint which I did." "My name is 

, I will thank you for yours; and if I have said or 

done anything improper, I am sorry, and ready to make 
amends." " My name is Junkin, I am brother to the De- 
fendant in appeal in the case now before you ; and if I 
have erred in addressing you as I did, I ask you to pardon 
me." He extended his hand, it received a brotherly 
grasp, and we parted, not to meet again until some years 
after the disruption, when he appeared in the Old School 
General Assembly, as a champion of the Old Theology, 
from a new Presbytery in one of the exscinded districts. 
There is reason for believing that this frank, noble, and 
gifted young man, then in sympathy with the New School, 
had, upon leaving the writer, after the above conversa- 



322 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

tion, taken pains to converse with some of his brethren 
about the impropriety of their behavior at the time Dr. 
Junkin arose to speak ; for whilst their attention was not 
always as undivided as was desirable, there was no repeti- 
tion of the indecorum above described. Mr. was 

particularly attentive ; and eight years afterward, when we 
happened to meet near Niagara, he told the writer that 
Dr. Junkin 's argument had set him upon a re-examination 
of the distinctions between the Old and New Theology; 
and that it had resulted in the full conviction that the Old 
School Theology was not only that which is embodied in our 
standards, but the Theology taught in the Holy Scriptures. 
It may not be improper to add that this gentleman has 
proved one of our ablest ministers, and at the date of 
this writing still lives, an honored pastor of an important 
church. 

The incident just narrated illustrates the spirit of those 
unhappy times, whilst it proves that many good and great 
minds were influenced by the force of circumstances, and 
by their local and social relations, to occupy ground which 
their cooler and more matured judgment did not approve. 
This may have been the case on both sides. 

Dr. Junkin's array of the proofs, and his arguments upon 
them, was worthy of himself and of the great issues in- 
volved. It is not our purpose to transfer to these pages 
even a syllabus of that plea. It can be found, by those 
curious to see it, in its main points, at least, in his "Vin- 
dication," a book now nearly out of print. Justice to 
him seems to require that a part at least of his introduc- 
tion and peroration be here inserted, as illustrative of the 
spirit with which he conducted this trial ; and some speci- 
mens of his argument will be found in the Appendix to this 
volume. 

He began with a graphic and impressive description of 
the solemn duties and tremendous responsibilities of the 



DR. JUNKIN'S EXORDIUM. 323 

Christian pastor, closing with, " In view of these exhausting 
labors, and consuming cares, and soul-burdening responsi- 
bilities, well may the man of God exclaim, ' Who is suffi- 
cient for these things?' " He then proceeds : 

"To all this, Mr. Moderator, I know your heart most 
cordially responds. Deeply have you felt these responsi- 
bilities, and earnestly have your desires gone forth after 
that grace whereby only any man can be sustained under a 
sense of their magnitude. Why, then, you will say to me, 
why harass a Christian brother? Why increase the heavy 
burdens of a minister of God by such a prosecution as this ? 
Has not this brother sufficient cares and labors already for 
any one man to sustain ? Wherefore, then, add the spirit- 
chafing and patience-exhausting efforts necessary in defend- 
ing himself against charges like these? 

"These interrogatories are very natural and specious. 
And I am not wholly unapprised of the peculiar difficulties 
to which he is exposed who voluntarily steps forward to be 
a public prosecutor of a Christian brother, eminent for 
talents, and occupying a distinguished station in the Pres- 
byterian Church. The simple fact creates, almost instinct- 
ively, a feeling of disgust towards the individual, and of 
indignation towards his conduct. Many will apply to such 
disturbers of the peace the language which John applies to 
Satan himself. Accordingly I have already been branded by 
not a few 'the accuser of the brethren,' and motives have 
been attributed to me which are not mine, either by original 
conception or by legal imputation. Hence, sir, it becomes 
necessary and just to premise a few remarks in reference to 
my present posture. 

"I. Not all the duties of men and of ministers are 
pleasant. Doubtless to have embraced his brother Peter 
in all the warmth of fraternal feeling, would have been very 
gratifying to the heart of Paul, and most congenial to the 
spirit of love that animated all his conduct; and yet he 
'withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.' 
And thus it often happens : the course most agreeable to 
our feelings is not the course of duty. Who that desires to 
preserve a conscience void of offence has never been con- 
strained to meet duties, even of friendship and love, very 
trying to both ? 



324 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNK IN. 

"II. Among the duties of this kind is the very one in 
question ; as in the case of Paul against Peter ; and as con- 
templated in the constitution of our church (Dis., v. 5), 
where we are told that 'process against a gospel minister 
shall not be commenced, unless some person or persons 
undertake to make out the charge.' It is perfectly obvious 
that if a minister is ever to be prosecuted, some person or 
persons must do it. It may, therefore, sometimes 

be the duty of some person to prosecute a Christian minis- 
ter. Do you demand the reasons why I think this time is 
come, and this person is before you ? 

" III. This demand I shall meet, not, however, to justify 
my motives, but simply to exhibit reasons for my conduct. 
Motives unexpressed it is God's to judge. All impeach- 
ment of these I leave with Him. No man has a right to 
judge motives, only so far as they are exhibited in conduct. 
If by look, word, or action I should violate the law of 
love, then condemn me ; but not upon the evidence of evil 
motives merely suspected and surmised. It is the purpose 
of my heart in all this business to be guided by that charity 
which thinketh no evil ; and if I be found to err from this 
purpose, it will be through infirmity of nature, and not 
through unchristian wilfulness. On this point, Mr. Mod- 
erator, you will please to keep in mind that neither quick- 
ness of reply, nor elevation of voice, becoming disagree- 
ably shrill as it rises, nor even vehemence of manner in 
action, are infallible evidences of bad temper in a speaker. 
By reason of these defects I have been frequently misun- 
derstood in public discussion, and bad feeling has been 
imputed to me, where there was everything the reverse. . . 
As to warmth of manner, sometimes approaching to vehe- 
mence, you will bear with it. You love to see it in the 
pulpit, and why not even in a judicial assembly, when the 
occasion calls for it ? If defect it be, it is one I am not 
very anxious to correct. My soul desires not alliance with 
him who can speak on the most serious and important sub- 
jects without emotion. 

"IV. The great reason why I am before you in the odious 
character of a volunteer accuser is this, that eternal truth is 
at stake. Brother Barnes has, in these 'Notes on Romans,' 
impugned some of the leading doctrines of Christianity. 
To me it appears that he has uttered sentiments directly at 



MR. BARNES' OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 325 

variance with the Standards of our church and with the 
Bible; and these not of comparative insignificance, but 
of vital importance. There are doctrines set forth in this 
volume, as I suppose, fundamentally wrong. Nor am I 
alone in this opinion. That you may be convinced of this, 
and thereby disposed to give me a more patient hearing, 
let me present the opinions of the gentlemen who conduct 
the Biblical Repertory." He then quotes from that Review, 
vol. ii. p. 92, and proceeds: "Other men, then, it seems, 
and men whose opinions are wont to be treated with re- 
spect, coincide with me in this opinion. .... Thus, 
you perceive, good reasons exist why some person should 
'make out the charges,' and procure a sentence of con- 
demnation of errors so fatal to the Christian system." 

Mr. Barnes, in his Defence, had complained that the 
bringing of these charges against him had affected his fair 
fame, and was calculated to bring suspicion upon him. 

" Suppose,", said he, " that Dr. Junkin had arraigned me 
on a charge of adultery. Suppose that the fact was pro- 
claimed abroad, and suspicions were excited, and counsel 
employed, and a jury empanelled, and the public mind 
agitated, and a strong bias should set against my character, 
and peace should flee from my family, and my public work 
should be closed. And then suppose that the public should 
be gravely told that all this was not designed to injure me, 
but to settle some mooted points about the crime in ques- 
tion, and in order to obtain a decision on the law. And 
would it be possible for the community to repress its indig- 
nation against conduct like this?" 

To this reductio ad odium Dr. Junkin replied, that the 
case supposed by Mr. Barnes had no points of similarity to 
his own, but was totally different : 

" 1. The brother has never been arraigned for adultery; 
but all the world knows that for many years he has been, 
not secretly suspected, but publicly accused, of holding the 
errors here charged. For six years the religious press, and 
in some degree the secular, press, have groaned under the 
weight of this controversy. This charge has been widely 
public and flagrant, long before my charges were written. 
28 



326 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

It is, therefore, idle, and worse than idle, to insinuate that 
I gave origin to these matters — have ' published them 
abroad' — have ' excited suspicions' to destroy ministerial 
character. No, sir, I never drew a pen, never published a 
line of the volumes that have been poured out upon the 
public within the last six years ; and therefore I feel it to 
be unkind in Brother Barnes to attempt to represent me as 
an agitator, coming in after ' the agitations of that time 
had died somewhat away,' and opening afresh the bleeding 
wounds of a convalescent church. ' The agitations of 
these times had died somewhat away' when these charges 
were brought! Had they, indeed? What! in March, 
1835? Why, Mr. Moderator, how had it been in the pre- 
ceding Assembly? Were there no 'agitations' there? No ! 
not a mountain-wave. — a sweeping tempest? Why, then, 
does my brother throw out so unkind an insinuation? 
Why does he seem to wish to have it understood that I 
intruded, like an evil angel, into the peaceful paradise of 
the Presbyterian Church, and threw it into agitation and 
angry strife? But (2) the hypothesis he presents proves 
the correctness of the remarks I made about the absurdity 
of abstract judicial process, whilst it differs from the present 
case in another most material point, viz., that a charge of 
adultery impeaches moral character ; but a charge of teach- 
ing error does not ; it exposes to civil penalties, the other 
does not. Let me press upon your notice the first as the 
chief point here. In preferring these charges I proclaimed 
nothing new. It was universally known that Brother 
Barnes was by many supposed to hold these opinions. In- 
deed, he himself stated it. ' Charges,' says he, 'similar to 
these had been alleged against me. Those accusations had 
been laid before the General Assembly.' Why, then, in- 
sinuate that the prosecutor has raised this storm ? On the 
contrary, may we not ask, Who intruded this controversy 
into the Presbytery and the Synod of Philadelphia? Did 
this storm break upon the City of Brotherly Love prior 
to the introduction of Brother Barnes' Way of Salva- 
tion ?" 

As the inquiry was often made at the time by those 
who were disposed to censure Dr. Junkin, "Why did he 
undertake this prosecution?" justice to his memory 



REASONS FOR THE PROSECUTION. 



3 2 7 



seems to require that we permit him to answer this question 
for himself. This he does, in the introduction to his 
speech before the Assembly, from which we have quoted 
above : 

£ ' There were special reasons inducing me to undertake 
this unpleasant service for the church: (i) I once be- 
longed to the same Presbytery with Mr. Barnes ; had lived, 
in the midst of the agitations growing, as I always sup- 
posed, out of his peculiar opinions ; had many opportuni- 
ties of marking the origin and spread of this leaven at 
work in the mass, and had some little knowledge of the 
brethren in and around Philadelphia — their peculiar tem- 
perament and talents. (2) I do not now belong to that 
Synod. For more than two years I had ceased to mingle 
in the deliberations of any of its Presbyteries. Removed 
to a distance, not too great to prevent accurate observation 
of passing events, nor so small as to keep me in the 
whirl of excitement caused by the New Theology, I really 
thought I could look calmly on the scene, and rightly esti- 
mate the state of things. Therefore (3) I had observed 
one of the necessary practical results of the continuance 
of these controversies — the waning of Presbyterian ism in 
that City. Grieved to witness this sad result, I was con- 
vinced that the cause must be removed, or the evil must 
increase. Convinced, as I still am, that the true answer to 
the church's complaint, ' Why is my pain perpetual, and 
my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed ?' (Jer. 
xv. 18) is found in the fact stated by the same prophet, 
'■ They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people 
slightly, saying Peace, peace, when there is no peace:' 
I could not avoid the opinion, that the man who would 
seize the probe, run it deep into the festering wound, and 
open up the hidden source of its irritation, though he 
must first expect the malediction of the patient, would 
nevertheless do her the highest service, and ultimately win 
her gratitude. (4) I had been thrown occasionally into 
the agitations of ecclesiastical strife, and though naturally 
of quick temperament, I thought, from past experience, that 
grace and prudence would carry me through this storm as 
well as others. (5) I had been a Pastor, and knew some- 
thing of a Pastor's cares, and toils, and joys, and sorrows, 



328 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK 'IN 

and therefore felt that my sympathies stood ready to shield 
the brother from any severity which truth might drop from 
my tongue. (6) The republication of the doctrines of 
'The Way of Salvation,' of which the General Assembly 
of 1831 had said it 'contains a number of unguarded and 
objectionable passages,' and their republication in a form 
more objectionable than before, shows that previous warn- 
ings have produced no good effect, and has opened the 
door and invited a prosecution, which stands entirely de- 
tached from the former collisions. (7) The charitable 
enterprises of the church have been long paralyzed by 
these agitations. Brethren have been compelled to resist 
innovation and to expend much force in this way, which 
might and wguld have been expended in the noble 
enterprises of the day, but for this necessity of defend- 
ing their own firesides against the intrusions of a new 
theology. 

"These are the leading reasons why this process is begun. 
But Brother Barnes has stated a variety of objections to 
the present prosecutor in particular : (1) 'He belongs to a 
different Presbytery from himself.' This I have shown to 
be a good reason for my undertaking it. (2) ' Brother B. 
was of good and fair standing in his Presbytery and church.' 
Answer — {a) That he stood fair with his people, if he was 
known to teach dangerous doctrines, is a good reason why 
some person should make out the charges ; for if his own 
people were dissatisfied with his doctrine, it would be evi- 
dence that they were not in danger of being drawn away 
from the Presbyterian Standards. (b) That his standing 
with his Presbytery was fair was to have been expected, 
because it was created expressly for his protection, all having 
been excluded from it who were likely to disturb him for 
his belief. If prosecuted at all, his prosecutor must come 
from another Presbytery. (3) Mr. Barnes objects, because 
he 'was pursuing the duties of a most arduous pastoral 
charge, requiring all his time and strength, and indeed ex- 
hausting the vigor of his life.' Oh, sir, if Mr. Barnes had 
met the requirement of this 'most arduous pastoral charge,' 
and devoted 'all his time and strength' sacredly to pas- 
toral duties, you had never heard of this prosecution ; for 
then these ' Notes' had never been written ; and hundreds 
and thousands of Presbyterian youth, and hoary heads, 



MR. BARNES' OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 329 

also, had never been endangered by the alarming doctrines 
of this book. No, sir, this brother did not devote 'all his 
time, strength, and vigor' to pastoral labors. ... He must 
needs write a book, containing the most 'objectionable' 
doctrines of his celebrated sermon, and thrust it forth 
among our Sunday-schools and Bible-classes, and churches 
and people, that thus he may teach tens of thousands sen- 
timents subversive of our entire system of doctrines. Thus 
the fire that was smothered under by the slightly healing 
policy of the Assembly of 1831, is, by the breath of this 
peaceful brother, blown into a flame that sweeps across the 
continent. Then, from the meekness of his peaceful retreat, 
he looks forth upon this tempest of fire, and placidly com- 
plains that the uproar, produced by the efforts to extinguish 
it, has disturbed the quietness of his retreat. Oh that he 
had paused but a little for reflection, and considered the 
possibility that the refluent flame might sweep through the 
branches of his own olive-tree, and consume the oil of his 
own consolations ! (4) ' These charges are substantially the 
same with those once before the Assembly.' So they are, 
and the Assembly condemned the sermon on 'The Way 
of Salvation' as 'containing a number of unguarded and 
objectionable passages' (Min., p. 180), but exculpated the 
writer on the ground of explanations given. And yet now, 
in this book of Notes, we have similar expressions, with- 
out an attempt to disguise by explanations. (5) ' To Dr. 
Junkin I had done no injury. ... By bringing these 
charges he alleges, impliedly, that he has been injured, 
either personally or as one of the Christian community. If 
not injured, in one of these senses, there could have been 
no justifiable pretence for bringing them.' On the con- 
trary, if the accused had injured me particularly, it would 
have been a constitutional bar against my prosecuting ; for 
the Book says, ' Great caution ought to be exercised in re- 
ceiving accusations from any person who is known to 
indulge a malignant spirit against the accused.' Now, 
injury received affords ground to suspect 'a malignant 
spirit,' and an interest in his conviction. (6) 'His opin- 
ions I have not attacked.' How he could make this state- 
ment it is difficult to surmise. My opinions are contained 
in the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms, and these are 
28* 



330 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

most unceremoniously attacked in this book. The very- 
language of the Catechism is quoted in derision on page 
117, thus, 'What idea is conveyed to men of common un- 
derstanding by the expression "they sinned in him"?' 
And so, as we shall see, on other pages. Has he not at- 
tacked my opinions? (7) I am President of a College, 
and therefore ought not to bring charges. 'Why should 
Dr. Jiuikin feel himself called to stand forth as the defender 
of orthodoxy and the accuser of his brethren? Why should 
the President of a literary institution feel himself called on to 
bring grave and solemn charges against a minister in another 
Presbytery?' In replying to this objection of Brother 
Barnes, it may be asked, why Presidents of Colleges, who 
have charges vastly more important to the church at large 
than any mere pastoral charge can be, should be deprived 
of any ministerial right? Why should men, who certainly 
need as much decision of character as any other class of 
citizens, be shut up to the degradation of everlasting fluc- 
tuation ? . . . . Must Presidents of Colleges necessarily be 
men of indecision in all matters of doctrinal belief? . •. . 
On the contrary, is it not entirely befitting those who are 
intrusted with the government of youth, and the train- 
ing of their minds to habits of decided and independent 
action, to form for themselves, cautiously and prudently, and 
to express, on all proper occasions, explicitly, openly, and 
honestly, the moral and religious principles by which they 
themselves and their institutions are governed ? Is there 
any class of men whose opinions the community has a 
deeper interest or a better right to know? 

"Now, it may be proper to state that some friends did 
advise me, in regard to these agitations of the church, to 
keep quiet, and I confess the advice seemed plausible ; and 
when the first trial of Mr. Barnes in the Presbytery of 
Philadelphia came on, I was providentially called to a dis- 
tance from the scene, and was glad of it, and would still 
have been glad to escape the unhappiness of this position. 
But, then, every Minister has come under obligation to main- 
tain the doctrines of our Standards against all opposition, 
wherever and whenever the God of providence shall present 
opportunity ; and, therefore, though often tempted to stand 
afar off and witness the noble strife for truth, I still met 
my ordination vows. They forbade my shrinking. They 



PRINCIPLES OP INTERPRETATION. 



33* 



told me of claims of conscience prior to those of any lit- 
erary institution, and of more fearful import." 

He next replied to the objection that the word heresy 
was not in the charges ; but we have given the substance 
of this answer elsewhere, and need not repeat it. 

Before entering upon the consideration of the charges, 
he alluded to the principle of interpretation adopted by 
Mr. Barnes, as expressed in the Preface to his book and in 
his defence : 

"It was further my intention, in preparing these Notes, 
not to be influenced in the interpretation by a regard to 
any Creed or Confession of Faith whatever. I make this 
frank avowal because it is the deliberate and settled purpose 
of my mind, and because it is the principle by which I 
always expect to be governed." 

Upon this, Dr. Junkin remarked : 

" No man admires decision of character, independence 
of mind, freedom of thought and action more than I do. 
. Accordingly, when about to expound a text or 
context, \ first study the Scripture, usually in the original, 
and without consulting note or comment of others. After- 
wards I examine authorities. This latter half of my rule 
is founded on the principle of my second remark, viz., 
that independence of mind does not consist in supercilious 
contempt of other men's opinions. Real humility appears 
to me entirely consistent with unflinching independence. 
To possess real decision, a man must possess clearness of 
perception and accuracy of discrimination ; for truth is the 
foundation of this quality. It is the soul's perception of 
the truth that gives promptitude in counsel and firmness 
in purpose. If a man, without this perception, asserts his 
claim to decision of character, he mistakes self-sufficiency 
for independence of mind, and mere obstinacy for the 
highest intellectual attainment. 

"3. I dissent from the rule laid down by Mr. Barnes, 
because every man is bound, by the highest authority, to 
interpret Scripture in consistency with Scripture, ' accord- 
ing to the analogy of faith,' Rom. xii. 6. No man is at 



33- 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUKKIN. 



liberty to take any given text and construe its terms ac- 
cording to their plain, natural meaning, irrespective of the 
drift and scope of the writer. . . . To do otherwise is 
to 'handle the word of God deceitfully.' . . . But 
Mr. Barnes rejects this obvious rule of interpretation, lest 
it should be applied to ' Systems of Theology,' and demand 
' that we should interpret the Bible so as to accord with the 
system' contained in itself. The first thing to be done in 
interpreting any piece of writing is to read it all over, and 
ascertain its general drift, its grand leading substance, its 
system. This ascertained, we are to be guided by this in 
examining its details more minutely. And this the Pres- 
byterian Church has done. This every minister of that 
church has solemnly declared, in the face of heaven and 
earth, that he has done in reference to the Bible. This 
declaration is made in his ordination vows. He has 
told the church that he has examined the Bible ; that 
though he does not pretend to understand all of it in its 
minute parts, yet that he has arranged in his own mind its 
grand leading thoughts, its system of truth, and now he 
solemnly pledges himself to be guided by these in his sub- 
sequent researches. This pledge is just and reasonable, and 
no man can be a Presbyterian minister until after he has 
given such pledge. His ordination vow embraces the 
Confession, as containing the system of doctrines taught 
in the Holy Scriptures. 

" Now, I contend that such pledge cannot be reconciled 
with the language of Mr. Barnes' rule above quoted. He 
professes to have given what he supposes, ' without any 
regard to any theological system, to be the meaning of the 
Apostle.' Whereas, neither he nor any other man has a 
right to interpret this particular section of Scripture with- 
out any regard to the theological system laid down in the 
Bible."* 

The foregoing is deemed sufficient to enable the reader 
to judge of the reasons of Dr. Junkin for placing himself 
in the position of a Prosecutor, and also of the reason- 
ableness of Mr. Barnes' objections to him as such. In 



* Vindication, pp. 3-19. 



RESULTS OF NEW THEOLOGY. 333 

the latter part of his exordium he shows that the author 
of the Notes had plainly violated his own rule of inter- 
pretation ; but it is not deemed necessary to quote more 
extensively. 

But little space can be spared for the conclusion of Dr. 
Junkin's address. After arraying the proof, with accom- 
panying arguments, he proceeds: 

" Such is the system of doctrine taught in these Notes. 
Now, Mr. Moderator, I do honestly, and in the fear of 
God, and in love to Brother Barnes, declare my belief that 
this leads, by a direct and short road, to downright, deso- 
lating, damning Socinianism. If this system is true, I'll 
be a Unitarian, or embrace the Deistical theory of the per- 
fectibility of human nature, as the easiest mode of escape 
from all these perplexing theological controversies. To 
my mind, the advocates of this system, who are gracious 
men, appear like a boat and crew suspended from the lower 
extremity of Grand Island by a cable one mile and three- 
eighths in length. There they hang upon the tossing, 
foaming surface of the mighty river — just over Niagara's 
roaring cataract — and row all their might down-stream, 
and are only prevented from accomplishing the fearful 
plunge by the strength of the cable. That cable, sir, is 
the grace of God, but for which, that mistaken crew would 
make the disastrous descent into the horrible gulf of Socini- 
anism ! Now, cut this cable, and where are the crew ? 
Put into this boat men who are not anchored to the throne 
of God by the very cords of grace which this system 
denies, and the moment they are let go, — where are they ? 
Oh, let us do our duty in endeavors to dissuade our breth- 
ren from such mad experiments ! If this system shall per- 
vade our church, where will our children be?" etc. etc. 

His closing paragraph was : 

" Solemn indeed are the responsibilities that now rest 
upon this Assembly. This is to you an hour of no ordi- 
nary interest. Never, perhaps, has a body of ministers 
and elders met on this Continent to whose acts so much 
importance has been attached, and to whom so large a 
number of the friends and the enemies of truth and order 



334 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

are looking with intense anxiety. Never, perhaps, has so 
much ardent supplication ascended to the Throne of Divine 
mercy on behalf of any General Assembly. Let a knowl- 
edge of this fact encourage you to faithfulness in the solemn 
duties of your station. And let us all bear in mind that 
there is 'a great white throne,' before which we must each 
one, for his own personal and official conduct, give an 
account to Him, whose eyes are as a flaming fire, and who 
will rectify all our mistakes, and shall pronounce a judg- 
ment according to truth that shall stand forever ! To you 
is now committed the final issue of this case on earth, and 
to Him in heaven !" 

The result of the trial of Mr. Barnes before the General 
Assembly was that his appeal was sustained. The trial 
occupied about a week of the time of the Assembly ; and 
the vote to sustain the appeal was carried by 134 to 96, 
six declining to vote, — and they of Old School sentiments, 
— and the large Synod of Philadelphia, of course, being 
excluded from the vote. It has been stated that, at the 
opening of the Assembly, the orthodox, including "mid- 
dle men," had a small majority. This was changed, by the 
arrival of other commissioners from Illinois and Missouri, 
on the third day of the session, so that the New School 
had a decisive majority when the Synod of Philadelphia 
was excluded. The result was received with great de- 
light by all the friends of innovation ; and yet, when the 
process by which that result was reached is considered, 
there was not much ground for triumph on the part of 
the friends of Mr. Barnes and the New Theology. To 
explain this is due to the truth of history. It might be 
sufficient to say, that the majority in the Assembly was the 
legitimate offspring of the Plan of Union and of the Home 
Missionary Society. Dr. Peters, the chief actuary of that 
Society, was the New School candidate for Moderator, 
and probably failed of his election only because a steam- 
boat, upon which many New School commissioners were 



VAST INTERESTS INVOLVED. 



335 



embarked, had run upon a sand-bar, and did not arrive at 
Pittsburg until after the election. That gentleman, with 
others, had been, during the previous year, marshalling 
the forces that adhered to his views. For not only were 
the great questions of Theology to be settled, but those also 
of Domestic and Foreign Missions. It seemed evident 
that upon the complexion and decisions of this Assembly 
depended the questions, whether or not the New Theol- 
ogy was to be tolerated in the Presbyterian Church, and 
whether the church was to have the control of her own 
missionary operations, at home and abroad. The interests 
involved were vast ; and the efforts of parties were propor- 
tionally energetic. The friends of innovation had this 
advantage of their opponents, — they were not restrained 
by strict constructions of the Constitution of the church ; 
and if it were an object to gain numbers by dividing up 
Presbyteries so as to increase the count of commissioners, 
they did not hesitate to do it in the Synods in which they 
had the control. The strict construction principles of the 
Old School restrained them from this. Besides, the Mis- 
sionary Presbyteries on the frontiers were often very small, 
and yet could send an equal number of commissioners to 
the Assembly with larger Presbyteries. And many of these 
Presbyteries were composed chiefly of missionaries of the 
American Home Missionary Society, of which Dr. Peters 
was the head. 

Now, in saying what is true, that in rallying numbers the 
New School were more expert than their opponents, — and 
that they possessed greater facilities for making their forces 
effective, — and that they did it, — we impeach no motive, and 
charge no criminality. Whilst differing totally from them 
in their Theology and their Polity, we can readily conceive 
that men of their "liberal" way of thinking, and looking 
upon the interests of religion and the country from a less 
denominational stand-point, might "verily think that they 



336 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

ought to do many things contrary to" the old Theology and 
the stiffer Presbyterianism of the Old School. That they 
did this is now matter of history ; and in order to account 
for their conduct, it is by no means necessary to ascribe to 
them unchristian or dishonorable motives. 

That not a few of the leaders did intend to effect exten- 
sive changes in the Doctrinal testimonies of the church, 
and in her Ecclesiastical polity, — changes which the Old 
School deemed revolutionary, — was proven by competent 
witnesses, and put on record, not long after the dissolution 
of the Assembly of 1836. That they could form such a 
purpose does not imply that they did not think it right, ex- 
pedient, and for the best interests of Christianity ; for we 
have no right to judge that they were insincere in adopting 
their theological opinions ; and when opinions are sincerely 
adopted, it is most natural to desire by all means to spread 
them. And it is, perhaps, impossible for an Old School 
mind, looking upon the history of this period from an Old 
School stand-point, and with his own rigid notions of 
church order, to form a judgment in regard thereto which 
would do simple and full justice to the actors in those 
scenes. 

It was to be expected that a majority, secured most 
probably by the means above indicated, and composed of 
men holding the views we have described, would be loyal 
to their leaders and to the aims which inspired them. 
And they were. To quote the pregnant language of Dr. 
Peters, in regard to one of the questions before the Assem- 
bly, it might be said of every question, — "that is to 

BE DECIDED BY A MAJORITY OF VOTES." 

In accounting for the result of the trial of Mr. Barnes, 
then, it is enough to know that the party which sympathized 
with him had a working majority ; that some of the moder- 
ate men who were sound in doctrine, shrunk from the idea 
of silencing a minister; that six asked to be excused from 



RESOLUTION OF DR. MILLER. 



337 



voting, and that the commissioners of the large Synod of 
Philadelphia were excluded from voting. Besides this, it 
is evident that quite a number of the members, who were 
convinced that the proof of most of the charges was suffi- 
cient, voted to sustain the appeal with the full expectation, 
that if they would join in acquitting the man, a majority 
of the Court would afterwards condemn and bear testimony 
against the doctrines of the book. 

Indeed, there is proof that, justly or not, this expectation 
was based upon supposed pledges of the New School ; for 
immediately after the vote to reverse the decision of the 
Synod, and remove the suspension of Mr. Barnes, Dr. 
Samuel Miller offered a resolution, pronouncing the judg- 
ment of the Assembly to be, that "Mr. Barnes has pub- 
lished opinions materially at variance with the Confession 
of Faith and the Word of God, especially with regard to 
original sin, the relation of man to Adam, and justification 
by faith in the atoning sacrifice and righteousness of the 
Redeemer;" censuring the manner in which he had, in 
his book and speech, ' ( controverted the language and doc- 
trines of our public Standards;" and admonishing him to 
"review his work on the Romans, and to modify its objec- 
tionable language ; and to be more careful in time to come 
to study the peace and purity of the church."* 

There is no doubt that Dr. Miller and others had been 
led, probably by out-door conversations of members of the 
Court, to believe that if they would vote to sustain the appeal 
and remove the suspension of Mr. Barnes, the friends of 
that gentleman would consent to the adoption of such a 
resolution. But the simple-hearted and venerable Professor 
reckoned without his host. That question, too, was "de- 
cided by a majority of votes." And the wonder is that, 
after sustaining the appeal, there could be found one hun- 

• Life of Dr. Miller, vol. ii. p. 237. 
29 



338 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKLV. 

dred and nine votes to pass so severe a censure upon a 
book, the author of which they had just restored to the 
ministry ! The vote stood 109 to 122; and it is a singular 
illustration of the forbearing spirit of Dr. Miller, and the 
moderate Old School men, towards persons accused of error, 
that they voted to acquit Mr. Barnes, and immediately after 
were anxious to say, in the resolution, that "the Assembly 
consider the manner in which Mr. Barnes has, controverted the 
language and the doctrine of our public Standards as very rep- 
rehensible, and as adapted to pervert the minds of the rising 
generation from the simplicity and purity of the gospel plan. 
And although some of the most objectionable statements 
and expressions, which appeared in the earlier editions of 
the work in question, have been either removed or so far 
modified and explained as to render them more accordant 
with our public formularies, still the Assembly considers 
the w*ork, even in its present amended form, as containing 
representations -which cannot be reconciled with the letter or 
spirit of our public Standards ; and would solemnly admon- 
ish Mr. Barnes," etc.* 

Now, if the candid reader will consider that one hundred 
and nine members of the General Assembly gave the above 
written judgment in regard to the "amended edition" of 
Mr. Barnes' book ; that Dr. Junkin's charges were based 
upon the first edition ; that 145 to 16 voted to sustain Dr. 
Junkin's Appeal in the Synod ; that 116 in the Synod voted 
for the sentence of suspension; that the majority in the 
General Assembly for sustaining Mr. Barnes' Appeal was 
only 38, 6 not voting, and the commissioners of eight Old 
School Presbyteries, in the Synod of Philadelphia (26), ex- 
cluded, he will perceive that the verdict against Dr. Jun- 
kin was by no means a decisive one ; indeed, that it was in 
his favor and against the accused ; for — 

* Life of Dr. Miller, vol. ii. p. 287, note. 



VOTE IN GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



339 



1. Some of the votes for sustaining Mr. Barnes' Appeal 
would not have been given to that end, but for the hope 
that, whilst the man was to be acquitted, his doctrines were 
to be condemned. This is proved by Dr. Miller's resolu- 
tion, and the vote it received. 

2. In the process of the trials of Mr. Barnes, under Dr. 
Junkin's charges, two hundred and forty-seven of their 
peers voted that the charges were sustained (3 in the Second 
Presbytery, 145 in the Synod, and 109 in the Assembly), 
whilst only 134 of the Assembly, and say 20 of his own 
Presbytery,* making, in all, 154 of his peers, voted that 
they were not sustained. Acquitted technically by the 
peculiar operation of our system of Courts, the majority of 
all who voted on Mr. Barnes' case pronounced the charges 
proven. This is mentioned simply to show that Dr. Jun- 
kin was justifiable in bringing the charges, and that if he 
erred in judgment in believing that Mr. Barnes had taught 
the errors charged, he erred in common with a vast ma- 
jority of the church. 

Two Protests were recorded against the decision of the 
Assembly in the case of Mr. Barnes. One of these was 
signed by one hundred and one members, the other by six- 
teen. These sixteen state in their protest, that " they are 
of opinion that the Appeal of the Rev. A. Barnes should 
be sustained only in part, and that a modified decision 
should be made," which statement corroborates the view 
given in the last paragraph that Mr. Barnes* acquittal was 
technical. Had these sixteen voted to sustain, and the six 
who declined voting, voted with them, as they probably 
would have done, the result would have been different. 

In their Protest the sixteen explicitly condemn the Second 
(Assembly's) Presbytery for withholding their records from 
the Synod of Philadelphia, and Mr. Barnes for refusing to 

* The writer could not ascertain the exact vote in his Presbytery. 



34 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

plead; and say that the act of the Synod, in trying Dr. 
Junkin's Appeal, was "questionable." They express the 
opinion that " the charges of Dr. Junkin were at least par- 
tially substantiated, and that on very important topics of 
the System of Doctrine contained in the Confession and 
the Word of God ; and that therefore the Appeal could be 
sustained only in a modified sense, if at all, on this ground, 
without an implied approbation of his doctrinal views." 2. 
They express the opinion that the sentence of the Synod 
was perhaps unduly severe, in view of the alterations Mr. 
Barnes had made in his book ; and 3. They aim to define 
their position in regard to this trial and its results, and con- 
clude by saying, "nor will they conceal that they have 
painful apprehensions that these things will lead to increased 
dissension, and endanger the disruption of the holy bonds 
which hold us together as a church."* 

Such was the profound conviction of these sixteen men, 
of whom Drs. Hoge and Miller and Judge Evving were the 
first three on the list. It was the verdict of peace men, "mid- 
dle men," in regard to the matters at issue; and if there 
were no other proof that Dr. Junkin had good grounds for 
his charges, this alone would be sufficient. 

All except two of these sixteen signed the other Protest, 
which exhibited such names as W. W. Phillips, D.D., Joseph 
McElroy, D.D., James Hoge, D.D., Francis McFarland, 
D.D., Samuel Miller, D.D., William L. Breckenridge, 
James Lenox, and others worthy of such company. They 
protest against the action of the Assembly — 

1. Because they believe the Standards of the church, in 
their plain and usually received meaning, to be the rule of 
judgment by which all doctrinal controversies are to be 
decided. And in the decision of the Assembly in the case 
of Mr. Barnes, there was a departure from that rule, a 

* Minutes, 1836, p. 286. 



PROTESTS. 



341 



refusal to bear testimony against errors, with an implied 
approbation of them, and a denial that ministers in our 
church are under obligations to conform to our doctrinal 
Standards. 

2. Because the errors in question do not consist merely 
or chiefly in ambiguous expressions and illustrations, but in 
sentiments respecting the great and important doctrines of 
the Gospel which are utterly inconsistent with the Confes- 
sion of Faith and the Word of God : " We sincerely and 
firmly believe that Mr. Barnes has denied, and that in a 
sneering manner, that Adam was the covenant head of the 
human race ; that all mankind sinned in him as such, and 
were thus brought under the penalty of transgression ; that 
Christ suffered the penalty of the law when he died for 
sin ; and that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us 
for justification," etc. 

3. "Because this expression of approbation of his opin- 
ions was passed after, as we believe, it had been clearly and 
sufficie?itly proved to the Assembly that Mr. Barnes had 
denied these important truths, and had expressed opinions 
concerning original sin, the nature of faith, and the nature 
of justification, which cannot be reconciled with our Stand- 
ards," etc.* 

That readers of these pages may be able to judge for 
themselves whether the opinion of these protestants was 
founded in truth, or whether the action of the majority 
was so founded, a point or two will now be stated. The 
reply to the Protest asserts that "Mr. Barnes nowhere 
denies, much less sneers at, the idea that Adam was the 
covenant and federal head of his posterity. On the con- 
trary, though he employs not these terms, he does, in other 
language, teach the same truths which are taught by the 
phraseology." 

* Minutes, 1836, p. 283. 
29* 



342 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

It should be noted that Dr. Junkin charged Mr. Barnes 
with denying that Adam was the federal head and repre- 
sentative of his natural posterity, and, as proof, he cited, 
among other passages from the book, the following, the 
comment upon Rom. v. 19: 

"Nothing is said here of the doctrine of representation. 
It is not affirmed that Adam was the representative of his 
race, nor is that language used in regard to him in the 
Bible. (2 ) Nothing is said of a covenant with him. No- 
where in the Scriptures is the term covenant applied to any 
transaction with Adam. (3) All that is established here is 
the simple fact that Adam sinned, and that this made it 
certain that all his posterity would be sinners. Beyond 
this the language of the Apostle does not go, and all else 
that has been said of this is the result of mere philosophical 
speculation. . . . Various attempts have been made to 
explain this. The most common has been that Adam was 
the representative of his race; that he was a covenant head, 
and that his sin was imputed to his posterity, and that they 
were held liable to punishment for it as if they had com- 
mitted it themselves. But to this there are great and insu- 
perable objections: (1) There is not one word of it in the 
Bible. Neither the terms representative, covenant, nor 
impute are ever applied to the transaction in the sacred 
Scriptures. (2) It is a mere philosophical theory ; an in- 
troduction of a speculation into theology, with an attempt 
to explain what the Bible has not explained."* 

' ' The words representative and federal head are never 
applied to Adam in the Bible. The reason is that the word 
representative implies an idea which could not have ex- 
isted in the case, — the consent of those who are represented. 
Besides, the Bible does not teach that they acted in him, 
or that he acted for them. No passage has ever yet been 
found that stated this doctrine, "f 

On Rom. v. 12, he says the Apostle "was inquiring into 
the cause why death was in the world ; and it would not 
account for that to say that all sinned in Adam. 

* Notes on Romans, 1st edition, p. 128. f Ibid., p. 120. 



STARTLING INCONSISTENCIES. 



343 



The expression 'in whom all have sinned' conveys no 
intelligible idea. As men had no existence then, in any 
sense, they could not then sin. What idea is conveyed to 
men of common understanding by the expression ' they 
sinned in him' ? " 

With such statements before them, cited from Mr. 
Barnes' book, how could the majority of the Assembly 
solemnly vote, and put on record, that "Mr. B. nowhere 
denies, much less sneers at, the idea that Adam was the 
covenant and federal head of his posterity, . . . but 
does, in other language, teach the same truths which are 
taught by the phraseology"? 

Not content with thus indorsing Mr. Barnes' orthodoxy, 
they solemnly declare, in the same reply, "that they do, 
cordially and ex animo, adopt the Confession of our church, 
on the points of doctrine in question, according to the 
obvious and most prevalent interpretation."* And in the 
same paragraph they express peculiar admiration for the 
Standards, and "deprecate any attempt to change the 
phraseology of our Standards, and disapprove of any lan- 
guage of light estimation of them." 

How such declarations could be made in such a con- 
nection, and why they were made, it is difficult to surmise. 
If, as some supposed, the design was to lull the appre- 
hensions of the Old School, and to reassure the "middle 
men," who gave evidence of alarm, it signally failed. For 
even the Peace men in the church perceived such irrecon- 
cilable inconsistency between the acts of the Assembly in 
acquitting Mr. Barnes, and the professions of the Assembly 
of loyalty to the Standards, that their confidence in those 
professions could not be won. From that time forth con- 
viction was brought home to the minds of all who became 
acquainted with the circumstances, that the New Theology 

* Minutes, 1836, p. 287. 



344 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNK IN. 

was to be shielded and disseminated in our church, under 
specious protestations of love to her Standards, which are 
in direct antagonism to that Theology. The substantial 
ends of the prosecution were attained. It was not Dr. 
Junkin's aim at all to put Mr. Barnes out of the ministry, 
or keep him out, but to obtain authoritative censure of 
his errors, convince the church that they were errors, 
and prevent their spread as Presbyterian doctrine. He 
would have greatly rejoiced if, at any time during the 
progress of the trials, Mr. Barnes had been convinced 
that his language was opposed to the Standards, and had 
proposed a satisfactory modification of it. The vindication 
of truth was all the Prosecutor sought. Indeed, at one 
time, during the preliminary steps of the trial of the Appeal 
before the Assembly, there seemed to be a prospect of such 
an amicable adjustment. The explanations of Mr. Barnes 
were so full, his apparent retractions so satisfactory, and 
his professed acceptance of the Confession so hearty, upon 
the points of the charges, that Dr. Junkin was induced to 
say to the Assembly, " If the concessions which we heard 
yesterday can be put in a form that is satisfactory, I shall 
be willing to take a course that will save the time of the 
Assembly." 

Had Mr. Barnes consented to put in writing statements 
which he had made on the floor, the trial might have been 
arrested, and possibly peace restored, and the unity of the 
church preserved. But Mr. Barnes declared, in answer to 
this proposal, that he meant not to retract anything, and 
never would. 

There is good reason to believe that Mr. Barnes had at 
one time been counselled to consent to a conformation of the 
language of his book to the teaching of the Standards, and 
was well-nigh persuaded to do it ; and that he was subse- 
quently advised to resume his attitude of adherence to his 
published views. 



AN INCIDENT. 



345 



An incident, illustrative of the probable influences that 
were gathered round the accused, occurred to the writer 
of these pages, then a young man in the second year of his 
ministry. This incident was detailed in a letter to Dr. 
G. W. Musgrave, in answer to one of inquiry from him, 
and published by him in the Presbyterian of 1837, p. 11.1. 
The writer had ridden out to Canonsburg, the seat of his 
Alma Mater, Jefferson College, and spent Sabbath, the 
29th of May, at that place. Dr. Lyman Beecher was his 
fellow-guest of the venerable President Brown. On Monday 
morning, as the young preacher was leaving Canonsburg, 
he overtook Dr. Beecher, and as they were both mounted, 
they rode together towards Pittsburg. 

The troubles of the church were soon introduced in the 
conversation by the Doctor. Both deplored them. Dr. B. 
seemed distressed at the prospect before our Zion. He 
inquired what terms Dr. Junkin would probably accept 
from Mr. Barnes as the basis of an amicable adjustment. 
He was assured, in reply, that all the Prosecutor sought 
was Union in the T?-uth, and that he and the Old School 
would be glad, so far as the writer knew, to accept of any 
terms that would preserve the inviolability of the Stand- 
ards. "What terms of concession do you think, Mr. 
Junkin, would satisfy your brother?" "I am not author- 
ized to speak for him, but it is my judgment and belief 
that, if Mr. Barnes will go as far in conforming his lan- 
guage and statements to the Confession of Faith as I 
understand you have done, in your recent publication of 
your views, my brother will be satisfied, and peace can be 
speedily reached." "Do you think so, Junkin?" said the 
Doctor, in his curt, emphatic way. "I think so. I have 
not read your book, nor has my brother, but from repre- 
sentations made of it to me, whilst it is not entirely such 
as we could wish it, we deem it substantially the truth ; 
and if Mr. Barnes will do as much to satisfy his brethren 



346 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

as you have done, the war may end." " Barnes must do 
it — Barnes will do it!" After riding a short time in 
silence, the Doctor resumed, " Junkin, we must get to the 
City before the Assembly convenes, — you must see your 
brother and his friends, — I will see Barnes and his ; we 
will have a meeting in the Lecture-room of Dr. Herron's 
church, and this trouble maybe adjusted." The young 
preacher consented to the proposal — the horses were urged 
to a speed that was far from comfortable, the older man 
keeping ahead. Few words were exchanged till the riders 
reached the Monongahela bridge, when the Doctor drew 
rein, and waited for his travelling companion to come up, 
and then said, " Now we must be quick. You see your 
brother and his friends, and we will arrange a meeting as 
soon as possible." To this the writer assented, rode rapidly, 
and did what he could to arrange the proposed interview. 
But Dr. Beecher and Mr. Barnes did not approach him, or 
grant him an interview, and the reason for this has never 
been explained to this day. Some were uncharitable enough 
to say at the time, that the arrival of the delayed steam- 
boat, with some thirty or more New School Commission- 
ers, giving to that party a majority in the Assembly, had 
superseded the necessity of observing the arrangement, on 
Dr. Beecher's part. The foregoing dialogue is given for 
substance : the precise words may not be remembered, but 
it is substantially correct. 

Other matters, of the gravest importance, came before 
the Assembly of 1836, and the manner in which they were 
disposed of hastened the crisis of disruption. Dr. Junkin 
was not a commissioner in this Assembly, and of course 
took no part in its deliberations on these subjects, but he 
was deeply interested for their proper termination. 

A committee had been appointed, by the Assembly of 
1835, to confer with the Synod of Pittsburg, in relation to 
a transfer of the control of the Western Foreign Mission- 



WESTERN FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 



347 



ary Society to the General Assembly, and to adjust terms 
of transfer. This Committee reported that they had per- 
formed the duty assigned them, that terms of transfer had 
been agreed upon, and were submitted, with their report, 
for the action of the Assembly. These terms can be seen 
in the Minutes, and in Baird's Digest, pp. 348, 349. 

This report was referred to a Committee, of which Dr. 
Phillips was chairman. This Committee presented a lengthy 
report, tracing the history of the negotiation, showing that 
the General Assembly had originated the proposal for the 
transfer, and could not, without bad faith, recede ; setting 
forth the duty of the church to engage more fully in For- 
eign Missions, detailing the advantages of accepting the 
generous terms of the Synod of Pittsburg, and closing with 
two resolutions, the first accepting of the transfer, and the 
second proposing to appoint a Board of Foreign Missions, 
the seat of whose operations should be in the city of New 
York.* 

Dr. Thomas H. Skinner, a member of the Committee, 
dissented, and presented a counter report, as follows : 

"Whereas, The American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions has been connected with the Presbyterian 
Church, from the year of its incorporation, by the very 
elements of its existence ; whereas, at the present time, a 
majority of the whole Board are Presbyterians; and whereas, 
it is undesirable, in conducting the work of Foreign Mis- 
sions, that there should be any collision at home or abroad ; 
therefore, 

"Resolved, That it is inexpedient that the Assembly 
should organize a separate Foreign Missionary Institu- 
tion, "f 

"After protracted discussion, the previous question was 
moved, and the adoption of the report was rejected (106 to 
no), and the Stated Clerk ordered to inform the Western 

* Minutes, 1836, p. 253. f Ibid., p. 257. 



34 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Foreign Missionary Society that the Assembly had not 
carried into effect the stipulations touching the receiving 
of that Society under their care."* 

A Protest against this action was presented, signed by- 
all of the minority still in the Assembly. 

The Old School looked upon this result as part of a 
programme for subordinating the Presbyterian Church to 
the New England Boards, and to New England Theology. 
It produced, immediately, a startling impression through- 
out the church. It was well known, that the fact mentioned 
in Dr. Skinner's report, that a majority of the members of 
the American Board were Presbyterians, was fallacious. 
None but corporate members can vote, — it is a close 
corporation, filling its own vacancies; and whilst of its 
eighty-three members forty-four were, at that juncture, 
Presbyterians in name, they had been appointed members 
of the Board, not by the General Assembly, but by the 
Board itself, and of course were such as the local Board 
would prefer ; and they were widely scattered from Maine 
to Mississippi, whilst the members who resided in and near 
Boston really controlled its operations. 

It is worthy of notice, that the two Presbyteries of Wil- 
mington and the (Assembly's) Second of Philadelphia, 
which had been dissolved for contumacy by the Synod to 
which they belonged, had nullified the order of Synod, 
continued their existence, and sent up commissioners to 
this Assembly, who were received, and that the Assembly 
restored the Presbyteries. 

The Old School members of the Assembly held one or 
two meetings for consultation, in the Second Church, 
during these exciting sessions. These were held after 
open and public notice had been given on the floor of the 
Assembly. 

* Minutes, 1836, pp. 278, 279. 



CONFERENCES. 



349 



At one of these meetings, a Committee, consisting of 
Drs. Phillips, McElroy, Potts, John Breckenridge, McFar- 
land, W. A. McDowell, and Krebs, with Elders James 
Lenox, Hugh Auchincloss, and Henry Rankin, were ap- 
pointed to correspond and consult with the orthodox 
brethren throughout the church, point out the dangers that 
were imminent, and, if it should be deemed expedient, 
call a Convention, preliminary to the next Assembly. 
Some, indeed, were for taking immediate steps towards a' 
division, but the measure just mentioned was fixed upon as 
preferable. 

In speaking of this, Mr. Gillett, the New School histo- 
rian of the church, says : 

"The appeal of Mr. Barnes and the aggrieved Presby- 
tery against the Synod of Philadelphia were triumphantly 
sustained. This was gall and wormwood to the defeated 
party. Again they met, and, encouraged by their previous 
experiment, summoned a Convention to meet in Philadel- 
phia, a few days previous to the meeting of the Assembly in 
1837. They had gone too far to recede, and felt the neces- 
sity of prompt action in order to maintain the position 
they had so boldly taken."* 

When it is remembered that one hundred and nine of the 
wisest, most prominent, most learned, and most godly men 
in the church, who were among Mr. Barnes' judges, signed 
a Protest, in which they condemned his doctrines ; when 
it is considered, also, that these were native-born, pro- 
nounced and original Presbyterians, whilst those who sus- 
tained the Appeal and the Complaint were, for the most 
part, imported from other denominations, and that after a 
few years some of them returned to the connections whence 
they had come; and when, in addition, it is remembered 
that the acquittal was the result of a party vote, the "tri- 
umphant" elements of the result are not so obvious. To 



* Vol. ii. p. 492. 

3° 



35 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

speak of that result as being "gall and wormwood" to 
sach men as Drs. Miller, Hoge, Phillips, and McElroy, is 
certainly to use a style of party intensity rather than that 
of sedate narrative. In what sense a defeated minority 
"had gone too far to recede," is not so obvious, for they 
had simply failed in vindicating what is now on all hands 
conceded to be the doctrine and order of the church of 
their fathers. No doubt, like Israel in captivity, they were 
sad; but that "gall and wormwood" is the proper meta- 
phor for the feelings of godly, learned, and earnest men, 
when mourning over the perils of the truth and the dis- 
tractions of a once peaceful church, would be difficult to 
prove. The Convention was not called by the meeting of 
the minority at Pittsburg, but they left it discretionary with 
the Committee above named. 

When his duties at Pittsburg were ended, Dr. Junkin 
returned to Easton, to the arduous toils of the College 
enterprise, to which he added, during this year, an impor- 
tant literary undertaking. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Results of the Barnes Trial — His Plea characterized — Its Influence upon 
Theological Opinion — Upon Students and Ministers — New Theology has 
made no Progress since — Its Effect upon the New School Body — It was 
an Original Cause of the Reunion, and of the Advanced Efficiency of 
the Church — Work of the Committee of Correspondence — Circular 
Letter — The Address — Delegation to Princeton — Conference — J. W. 
Alexander — Purpose to found a New Seminary — Robert Lenox, Esq. — 
Union Seminary founded — Its Origin and Aims — Call of a Convention — 
It meets — Its Doings — Memorial and Testimony — Dr. Breckenridge its 
Author — Assembly of 1837 — Old School Majority — Its Men— Its Debates 
— Its Doings — Sketches of its Prominent Speakers — Abrogation of Plan of 
Union — Various Proposals for Division — All rejected — Incidents of De- 
bate — Final Measures. 

THE results of Dr. Junkin's arduous and self-denying 
labors in the Barnes trials can never be fully estimated ; 
and yet a biography of him would be incomplete, and fail 
to do justice to his memory, if no indication of those results 
should be attempted. His argument, as presented to the 
Presbytery, to the Synod, and ultimately to the General 
Assembly, has been pronounced by many of the most 
astute and scholarly minds of his generation one of the 
most full, well-ordered, and demonstrative that had ever 
been constructed upon the points involved. Dr. Ely, in 
his "Contrast," had done a good work, in presenting the 
antagonisms of Hopkinsianism to the Calvinism of our 
Standards ; and Dr. Joshua L. Wilson had drawn from Dr. 
Beecher very important concessions in the direction of 
orthodoxy; concessions that greatly crippled and tram- 
melled divines of his own school in their subsequent war 
upon old Calvinism. But Dr. Junkin's argument set the 

(350 



352 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

two systems side by side in such distinct detail, and threw 
upon each such a flood of Scripture light and perspicuous 
logic, as enabled all minds of ordinary power of discrimi- 
nation to see the contrast between them. Possessing, as 
he did, extraordinary powers of analysis and synthesis ; 
keen in detecting the most plausible sophisms ; looking to 
particulars and details with a microscopic exactness, yet 
grasping them all in their relations as components of a sys- 
tem with wondrous constructive skill, he was successful in 
setting forth the system of doctrine contained in our Stand- 
ards with a boldness of relief, a distinctness of outline, 
and a symmetry of proportion which the logical mind con- 
templates with delight. With similar skill and power he 
arrayed the opposing errors, pointed out their relations, 
and showed their dangerous tendencies. We know that 
some who came to the Assembly of 1836 strongly biassed 
in favor of the New Theology, lived to become thorough 
advocates of the Old, and to ascribe the change in part to 
his argument. And would it be claiming too much to 
express the belief, that the extraordinary explicitness and 
ardor with which the majority of that Assembly declared 
their loyalty to the Standards of the church may have been 
attributable, in a measure, to the clearness and force with 
which those Standards were defended ? It is true, some 
writers have ascribed those expressions of fealty to less 
worthy motives, and supposed that they were dictated by 
party policy ; but we ought always to impute the best mo- 
tives. Certain it is, that the abettors of the New Divinity 
acknowledged the force of Dr. Junkin's plea for orthodoxy 
confessing it to be the clearest argument then produced on 
his side of the question. 

Besides the influence which it had upon the minds of 
those who heard it, it was read by many thousands of the 
best minds of the country, and as the students of theology 
were strongly interested in the discussions of that period, 



NEW THEOLOGY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS. 353 

it was much consulted by them, and accomplished great 
good in assisting them to form clear and discriminating 
views. It aroused many of the ministers of our church to 
a fuller investigation of the points in controversy, and 
proved a valuable contribution to Polemic and Practical 
Theology. A perusal of his argument, it is thought, will 
do much to convince the mind of any candid reader, that 
the great truths which it defends, are of the utmost practi- 
cal importance, and that belief in them must form the 
basis of all true and thorough piety. 

It is now also matter of history, that ever since the coiiflict 
at Pittsburg, in the Barnes trial, the tide of the New The- 
ology, which at one time threatened to overflow the Pres- 
byterian Churches, has been ebbing. As we have seen, the 
New School majority of that Assembly, in their answer to 
the Protest of the orthodox, committed themselves, in the 
most explicit terms, to a "cordial and ex ammo" adoption 
of the Confession of our church, "on the points of doc- 
trine in question, according to the obvious and most pre- 
valent interpretation." That pledge was the result either 
of honest conviction, or of the force of circumstances, or 
of both. And from the hour in which it was recorded, 
that pledge has operated with a centripetal force, drawing 
the great body of the New School in the direction of the 
" Standards, pure and simple." This proclivity in a right 
direction was accelerated by the disruption of 1838, and 
the necessities growing out of their claim to be the true 
constitutional church. In order to maintain that claim, 
adherence to the doctrine and order of the Standards 
became a logical and legal necessity, especially after the 
Lawsuit was instituted. And, as there can be no doubt 
that a large proportion of that party were really sound 
in doctrine, and were found in its ranks from sympathy 
and the force of circumstances, the pledge and the neces- 
sities above mentioned gave to that portion a power over 
3°* 



354 L[FE 0F DR - GEORGE J UN KIN. 

the whole body, to draw it in the direction of sound 
Presbyterianism. 

Now, to the prosecution of Mr. Barnes, and the thor- 
oughness with which it was conducted, is to be attributed, 
in a large degree, the rousing of the Old School to a sense 
of the danger of the church, and the necessity of reform ; 
and it was that prosecution, and the incidents insepar- 
able from it, which called forth the pledge, and brought 
about the state of things which operated so happily, 
in causing the New School ranks to oblique to the right, 
until, in the march of thirty years, the columns of the two 
hosts were found advancing in parallel lines. Indeed, so 
inevitable was this tendency, under the forces just indicated, 
that, in less than fourteen years after the disruption, our 
New School brethren were found battling with the same 
breezes of Congregational voluntaryism to which we had 
attributed the raising of the waves of trouble previous to 
that disruption. Nor did this virtuous conflict cease, until 
many of the men and many of the methods which had 
troubled us, were eliminated from the other Branch, leaving 
them a homogeneous, effective, and thoroughly Presby- 
terian body. If "all things work together (co-operate) 
for good to them that love God," if He causes "the 
wrath of man to praise Him, and restraineth the remainder 
of wrath," and if He 

" From seeming evil still educes good," 

may we not, after all, have reason to bless the great Head 
of the Church, that He has graciously overruled the storms 
of the past, so as to effect greater purity, and secure more 
perfect and abiding peace, to our Zion? It seems scarcely 
possible, for the candid and sagacious philosopher of his- 
tory, to avoid the conclusion, that the Great Controller of 
events, who is " Head over all things to the Church," did 
employ the very process, which it has been our painful 



EFFECT UPON THE CHURCH. 355 

duty to sketch upon these pages, for the grand purpose of 
removing evils, and averting dangers, which good men were 
slow to believe existed, and of bringing about a more 
blessed condition of the great Presbyterian Church in this 
land. There was doubtless much of human frailty and 
passion exhibited on both sides, in the progress of the 
struggle, whilst there was also much of Christian zeal, and 
meekness, magnanimity, faithfulness, and heroism. Intel- 
lectual ability of the highest order was exhibited, and 
whilst it was sad to behold brethren arrayed against each 
other in stern conflict, the very earnestness which they 
displayed was proof of the depth of their convictions, and 
of the high estimate they placed upon the great principles 
of religion for which they contended. 

Again : Can it be reasonably supposed that, if the prose- 
cution of Mr. Barnes had not been conducted with ability, 
Christian meekness, and firmness, the Presbyterian Church 
would have been, at this day, the large, sound, homogeneous, 
and effective body which she is ? Had the Plan of Union 
been maintained ; had the Domestic missions of the church 
been consigned to the voluntary Society which aspired to 
control them ; had the New Theology, through that irre- 
sponsible but efficient agency, been shed, like the leaves 
of autumn, over her congregations ; had she been content 
to remain an auxiliary to the American Board of Foreign 
Missions; had she surrendered, to a Society beyond her 
surveillance and control, the education of her ministers ; 
had she yielded the right of examination, and compelled 
her Presbyteries to admit all intrants who came with clear 
credentials; and had she completed the system of disor- 
ganization and dependence, by declaring her Standards so 
plastic and so elastic as to admit of any construction, and 
her government and discipline, however excellent, was never 
to be enforced to the exclusion of error ; would she have 
been the church which we this day behold and venerate ? 



356 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

The storm seems terrible, but it clears the skies, exhausts 
the clouds, purifies the air, and brings out the sun in fuller 
splendor. 

In addition to the benefits resulting from Dr. Junkin's 
agency in conducting the doctrinal struggle to an issue, the 
influence it had in bringing the entire body of the Old 
School into line at the alarming crisis now reached is 
worthy of mention. Many good and sound men were 
reluctant to believe that the errors charged upon Mr. 
Barnes were so wide-spread, or that there could be found 
so many in the church willing to tolerate them. Proof, 
such as the acquittal of Mr. Barnes and the circumstances 
attending it, was needed, to convince these excellent breth- 
ren of the real state of things. And although some of 
them were slow to adopt decisive measures, they no longer 
acted with the innovating party. In all his reasonings 
and pleadings upon the doctrinal issues, Dr. Junkin kept 
his eye upon the other phases of the great controversy. 
"Unity in the truth, in order to evangelical efficiency," 
was his great aim. He often uttered the sentiment, that 
it was the great mission of the church to send the gospel 
to all the world. This he believed she could do effi- 
ciently only by being herself a Missionary society. He 
believed that the new and "other gospel" of the semi- 
Pelagian system, was not worth sending to the heathen, 
or preaching at home, and that its introduction into the 
Presbyterian Church had occasioned all the divisions and 
distractions which prevented her from accomplishing her 
mission, at home and abroad ; hence he was earnestly 
anxious to eliminate error as a means of restoring peace 
and unity, and of fitting the church for her great work. 
At this he aimed, and the just and candid verdict of pos- 
terity will aver that he did not labor in vain ! If he had 
done nothing else for his generation, and the church of 
his choice, he did not live for naught. 



COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



357 



The Committee of Correspondence, appointed by the 
minority of the Assembly of 1836, entered with prompt- 
ness upon the delicate and important duties assigned them, 
and performed them with much wisdom and ability. 
Shortly after the adjournment of the Assembly they pre- 
pared a letter, caused it to be lithographed, and sent it to 
prominent office-bearers in all parts of the church. In this 
letter they proposed certain questions, in regard to the 
present state and future prospects of the church, and re- 
quested explicit answers, with a view to collect facts and 
opinions. They set forth the recent history of the struggle, 
and quoted the declaration of leading New School men in 
the last Assembly, as indicating revolutionary designs. 
They also presented a critical and just exposition of the 
errors which they believed had been proven against Mr. 
Barnes in the trial, " so faithfully and laboriously conducted 
by Dr. Junkin," bore testimony to the Christian spirit with 
which it was conducted, and appealed to their brethren to 
do for the preservation of the church of their fathers, what- 
ever a good conscience might in the sight of God demand. 

Some have, at different times, and especially in late 
years, attempted to deny that the schism of 1838 was really 
the result of doctrinal diversity. But that it was so, is 
proven by the whole history of the controversy, and es- 
pecially by the testimony of this able document of the 
Committee of Correspondence. Their chief aim, in this 
circular, was to point out the serious and fundamental 
errors which were spreading, and which the votes of the last 
General Assembly had declared should be tolerated in the 
Presbyterian Church. And, in their seventh inquiry, they 
indicated the source whence chiefly they supposed these 
errors to flow, — connection with the churches and voluntary 
societies of the Congregationalists. 

Of course this circular called forth from the other party 
strong expressions of indignation. It was denounced as a 



358 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

secret conspiracy to divide the church, and by other op- 
probrious names. But the men whose names were appended 
to it, were of too high character to be very success- 
fully charged with such designs. They were pure, grave, 
godly, wise, dispassionate, and intelligent men, — men who 
occupied the highest social and official positions in the 
church, and who commanded respect throughout the na- 
tion. Their circular accomplished its purpose, and was 
blessed of God as the means of calling forth the strength 
of the church to the rescue of the truth. 

The Committee, after obtaining a vast amount of in- 
formation in reply to this circular, published, in a pamphlet 
of forty-one pages, "An Address to the Ministers, Elders, 
and Members of the Presbyterian Church." In this they 
set forth the necessity of purity of faith as an element in- 
dispensable to the efficiency of the church ; the necessity 
of a sincere and honest adoption of the Confession, in order 
to doctrinal purity; and the danger of subscription "for 
substance of doctrine." 

They reviewed the case of Mr. Barnes, and the decisions 
of the Assembly therein, and upon the questions of Missions 
and Education, and dwelt with particular force upon the 
repudiation of the treaty which the previous Assembly had 
solemnly authorized with the Western Foreign Missionary 
Society. From the whole survey they came to the conclu- 
sion expressed in the following paragraph : 

" Fathers, brethren, and fellow-Christians, whatever else 
is dark, this is clear, — We cannot continue in the same body 
We are not agreed, and it is vain to attempt to walk to- 
gether. That those, whom we regard as the authors of 
our present distractions, will retrace their steps, is not to 
be expected ; and that those who have hitherto rallied 
around the Standards of our church, will continue to do so, 
is both to be expected and desired. In some way or other, 
therefore, these men must be separated from us." 

Thus was foreshadowed a result, which was realized 



PRINCETON PROFESSORS. 359 

within the next two years. But this Committee did not 
indicate the process. 

It was deemed of great importance that all the orthodox 
should be brought to hearty co-operation in the same pro- 
cesses of reform. Hitherto their opponents were a unit in 
action, while some of the best men of the Old School 
party hesitated to go with the majority in the measures 
which that majority deemed right and wise. Sometimes, 
indeed, as in the Barnes trial, thoroughly orthodox men 
voted with the New School, although they acknowledged, 
as we have shown, by their own signatures, that funda- 
mental errors had been proven. The position occupied by 
the Princeton Professors, who justly had great influence 
with their former pupils, was of an intermediate character, 
and many went with them. It was deemed of great impor- 
tance to induce them to take a stand with the majority of 
their brethren. It was known that they as fully deplored 
the action of the Assembly of 1836 as the Old School 
minority of that body ; but they faltered with regard to 
methods of averting the evils deplored. 

With the hope of removing their scruples, "a company 
of gentlemen were designated, by a large and respectable 
number of the Old School, to proceed in a noiseless and 
unobserved manner to wait upon the Professors at their 
homes, to reason and remonstrate with them on the subject 
of their position, and to induce them, if possible, to con- 
cur with their brethren in the public action of the church. 
These gentlemen assembled at Princeton in the autumn of 
1836, and met the Professors in Dr. Hodge's study, whither 
they had been invited to repair. At this conference the 
three Professors of the Seminary attended, and the Rev. 
James W. Alexander was also present. The following 
members of the Old School deputation were in attendance : 
Rev. Drs. James Blythe, of Indiana ; C. C. Cuyler, of 
Philadelphia; George Junkin, of Easton ; W. W. Phil- 



360 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

lips, of New York; and Rev. Isaac V. Brown, of New 
Jersey."* 

This conference did not result in any decisive action 
or promise of action at the time ; but there is reason to 
believe that its influence tended to secure the ultimate 
co-operation of Princeton with the rest of the Old School 
party. Dr. James W. Alexander, then comparatively a 
young man, is represented by Mr. Brown as having made 
some remarks at this interview "in a very unassuming and 
respectful manner" which seemed to produce a deep im- 
pression, and a tendency in a right direction. There was 
evidently some approximation towards less divided counsels. 

Mr. Brown mentions in his book, "The Old School 
Vindicated," a fact illustrative both of the strong appre- 
hensions of men's minds at that period, and of the critical 
condition in which our oldest Seminary was placed, by 
what many considered a lack of decision on the part of its 
Professors : 

"In a neighboring city lived a rich, intelligent, and 
very devoted elder of the Old School body, of Scotch 
education and type of religion. His zeal for the church 
and her doctrines was strong. In common with others, he 
was apprehensive that the church, through the indefatiga- 
ble and unscrupulous action of the New School, and the 
unhappy defection of Princeton, would, in a short time, be 
entirely under New School control. . . . He was conse- 
quently very solicitous that this delegation to Princeton 
should ascertain whether the theological gentlemen at 
Princeton, who had opposed the Act and Testimony, were 
determined to persist in their course. Unless some favor- 
able indications should be given, he, and others like- 
minded, had resolved to abandon Princeton to the control 
of the adversaries, and immediately establish another 
Seminary on a basis entirely out of their reach. For this 
purpose the money was already in bank; a beautiful site, 
with appropriate grounds and edifices, was selected ; the 

* Brown's Historical Vindication, p. 175. 



UNION SEMINARY. 361 

principal officers for the institution were designated from 
among the most prominent in our church, and everything 
was ready for action. But the delegates did not, on the 
whole, consider the condition of the Seminary at Prince- 
ton, exposed as it was, sufficiently desperate to warrant so 
great a sacrifice, and so decisive a. change, at that time; 
and the friends in New York cordially acquiesced."* 

Of course (although Mr. Brown does not say so) nothing 
of this was known at the time to the gentlemen at Prince- 
ton. No doubt pains were taken to avoid anything that 
would look like an in terrorem. The Elder alluded to was 
Robert Lenox, Esq., the father of James Lenox, Esq., than 
whom no more faithful ruling elder, wise counsellor, liberal 
benefactor, or eminent philanthropist has been vouch- 
safed to our church by a kind Providence. Although the 
Committee of Conference left Princeton somewhat dis- 
couraged, yet subsequent events afforded evidence that 
their visit had not been in vain. The Presbytery of New 
Brunswick, to which the Professors belonged, and which 
had hitherto maintained an attitude of non-co-operation 
with the Old School majority, shortly afterwards took more 
decisive conservative ground ; and the venerable Dr. Alex- 
ander, who represented that Presbytery, in part, in the 
next General Assembly, was forward and decisive in pro- 
posing and securing the adoption of measures which caused 
the triumph of truth and order. 

About the same time that this delegation of gentlemen 
visited Princeton, another event occurred which was part 
of the programme of the party of innovation, and which 
gave evidence that they were not satisfied with the theology 
taught at the Seminary at Princeton. This was nothing 
less than the establishment of another Theological Semi- 
nary, within two hours' ride of Princeton, viz., in the City 
of New York. Mr. Gillett says it was projected a year 

* The Old School Vindicated, p. 176. 
31 



3 6 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNR'IN. 

before (1835), founded in January, 1836, and went into 
operation December 5, 1836.* The same writer informs 
us that one of the considerations which led to this project 
was, to have a Seminary beyond the control of the General 
Assembly. His language is : 

"It was felt, moreover, that, sustained by the patronage 
and confidence of the pastors and churches of New York, 
and those that sympathized with them throughout the 
church, the proposed institution might be competently 
endowed, ably officered, and well sustained. It would at 
least, in the hands of directors independent of the Assem- 
bly, remain under the control of men who would promote 
its interests without reference to an accidental majority in 
the Assembly. "f 

This movement was, no doubt, the result of the counsels 
of men of a higher tone of Christian honor than some of 
their brethren, — men whose sense of propriety shrunk from 
the proposal that had been suggested at Pittsburg, to seize 
upon Princeton and revolutionize its teachings. Such men 
as Drs. Erskine Mason, and Henry White, J and Thomas 
H. Skinner, and Ichabod S. Spencer, and the laymen of 
high-toned principle who were associated with them, how- 
ever zealous they might be for their opinions, would not 
consent to pervert an institution and its funds from the 
purposes to which they had been devoted. They wished for 
an institution in which the modified Calvinism, which some 
of them favored, should be taught without the restraints 
which the Old School seemed determined to impose ; but 
they were too honorable and fair-minded to repeat the 
history of Harvard, even in the slightest measure, and seize 
upon an institution consecrated to other ends. 

The founding of this Seminary, however, was a confession 

* History, vol. ii. pp. 501, 502. 

f Gillett's History, vol. ii. p. 501. 

X Drs. Mason and White were sound Calvinists. 



CONVENTION PROPOSED. 363 

that the New School Theology did differ from that taught 
at Princeton, to such an extent as to justify the cost of 
money and men which would be necessary to establish an- 
other school in the vicinity of that institution of the church. 
This was rather a contradiction of the loyal declarations 
made in the answer to the protest in the Barnes case. The 
fact that the Union Seminary was projected in 1835, and 
not put in operation until the close of the following year, 
renders it probable that the delay was occasioned by a 
waiting upon the developing of events. 

" The Committee of Correspondence, whose labors have 
been mentioned above, invited the members of the Assem- 
bly of 1837 to convene for consultation a week before its 
meeting. The call for this conference was issued on the 
1 2th of January. It stated that the result of their extensive 
correspondence had produced the conviction, that a very 
general desire prevailed among the conservative portion of 
the church to have the agitating contentions ended, "by 
removing the causes in which they originated." And they 
recommended that the day upon which the Convention 
was to assemble in Philadelphia — the second Thursday of 
May — should be observed as a day of fasting, humiliation, 
and prayer throughout the churches. The call was pub- 
lished in all the conservative papers, and the opposite 
party had full warning of the earnest efforts that were to 
be made. 

Meanwhile there was a very general expression of opin- 
ion that something decisive must be done. The Pri?ueton 
Review raised its voice in warning against the " imminent 
dangers of the church." Dr. Miller, Dr. McFarland, Dr. 
John Breckenridge, at that time a Professor in Princeton 
Seminary, and others, known hitherto to be men of mild 
counsels, wrote effective appeals to the ministers, elders, 
and people of the church, and every indication pointed to 
a unity of counsels not previously attained. The Old 



364 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

School, who had hitherto been excelled in ecclesiastica- 
tactics, who had, indeed, seemed to shrink from even the 
most obviously necessary means for concentrating their 
forces, now began to imitate the example of their oppo- 
nents, so far as to arouse the interest of their friends, and 
gather their forces to the conflict. The consequence was 
that the delegations from Old School Presbyteries were 
fuller, the eldership came up in force, and pains seem to 
have been taken to send as Commissioners men of power, 
influence, and distinction. This was the case, indeed, on 
both sides, and the result was that rarely has there been as- 
sembled in our country, either in a civil or ecclesiastical 
body, such a number of men eminent for talent, wisdom, 
experience, and social position and influence as the Gene- 
ral Assembly of 1837. "The parties into which the As- 
sembly was divided," says Mr. Gillett, "were ably repre- 
sented. On one side were the Rev. Drs. Green, Elliott, 
A. Alexander, Junkin, Baxter, Cuyler, Graham, and With- 
erspoon, and Messrs. R. J. Breckenridge, Plumer, Murray, 
and others. On the other side were Drs. Beman, Porter, 
of Catskill, McAuley, Peters, and Cleland, and Rev. 
Messrs. Duffield, Gilbert, Cleveland, Dickinson, and Judge 
Jessup." 

The Convention met on the nth of May. Rev. James 
Blythe, D.D., was temporary Chairman, and Rev. Thomas 
D. Baird temporary Clerk. The entire day was devoted to 
humiliation and prayer. Next day they organized fully by 
appointing Dr. George A. Baxter, of Va., President, Dr. 
C. C. Cuyler, Vice-President, Rev. T. D. Baird, Recording 
Clerk, and Rev. H. S. Pratt, Reader. The Convention 
first brought before it all the facts relating to the con- 
dition of the church, by calling the roll, and asking every 
member to state what fell within his own knowledge. This 
array of facts left the most skeptical of the doubting 
brethren without excuse for longer denying the existence 



MEETING OF THE CONVENTION. 365 

of the disorders of which the Old School had for years 
complained. 

A Committee was appointed to prepare, from the facts 
thus elicited and their own knowledge of the history and 
state of these troubles, a Testimony and Memorial, to be 
laid before the Assembly. Dr. Robert J. Breckenridge was 
Chairman of the Committee, and Dr. Potts, Dr. Smyth, 
of Charleston, Judge Ewing, and Hon. David Fullerton, 
members. The paper was such as might have been ex- 
pected from the pen of that vigorous thinker who was at 
the head of the Committee. It was an earnest, solemn, 
calm, logical, and determined document, lucidly array- 
ing the facts of the great struggle, pointing out the evils 
under which the church had been groaning, vindicating 
the measures which the Old School party had hitherto 
adopted, and insisting that the evils complained of must 
be remedied without further delay. Like the Memorial of 
the Pittsburg Convention, it enumerated the errors in 
doctrine against which it bore testimony, and protested 
against permitting the church any longer to be held in 
bonds by the Voluntary Societies. "We contend es- 
pecially, and above all, for the truth, as it is made known 
to us for the salvation of men. We contend for nothing 
else, except as the result or the support of this inestimable 
treasure. It is because this is subverted that we grieve ; it 
is because our Standards teach it that we bewail their per- 
version ; it is because our church order and discipline 
preserve, defend, and diffuse it that we weep over their 
impending ruin." 

The Memorial asked for the abrogation of the Plan of 
Union, the discountenancing of the Voluntary Societies, 
the separation from the church of all inferior courts not 
Presbyterially organized, the enforcement of the duty of 
examining intrants, the due discipline of errorists, and of 
courts that tolerate them, and the adoption of appropriate 
3 1 * 



366 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

measures, so " that such of these bodies as are believed to 
consist chiefly of unsound or disorderly members may be 
separated from the church."* 

This Memorial was signed by the officers of the Conven- 
tion, and presented to the Assembly in its name. 

The Assembly met in the Central, but on Monday re- 
moved to the Seventh Church. 

The Old School had, at the opening, a majority of thirty- 
one, as was indicated by the election of Dr. David Elliott, 
Moderator, over the Rev. Baxter Dickinson. This majority 
was increased by subsequent arrivals. The Memorial was 
presented on the second day of the sessions, and referred 
of course to the Committee of Overtures, who, next day, 
reported it to the Assembly, and it was again referred 
to a Committee, consisting of Drs. Archibald Alexander, 
Plumer, Green, Baxter, and Leland, with Elders Walter 
Lowrie and James Lenox, f 

The doctrinal testimony was first reported to the house, 
and, after a long discussion and no little parliamentary 
manoeuvring, temporarily postponed. This was the great 
issue upon which hung all other parts of the contest ; and 
the New School leaders sought to render the testimony 
absurd and useless, by moving many additions to it of 
matters about which there was no dispute — the process, in 
secular legislation, called "putting on riders." 

The other points of the Memorial were reported from 
time to time, discussed, and adopted. Resolutions pro- 
posing to continue fraternal correspondence with the Con- 
gregational churches, and to abrogate the Plan of Union, 
were introduced. Upon the latter proposal warm dis- 
cussion ensued. The writer of this memoir heard this 
debate, and the others which took place in that General 
Assembly, and he was impressed with the ability and 

* Baird's Hist., p. 522. f Ibid., p. 523. 



PROMINENT MEN. 



367 



earnestness displayed upon both sides. Men of power 
were there, and their powers were called forth, in highest 
exertion, by the vastness and vitality of the issues in- 
volved, and by that stimulus which is furnished by a 
great occasion, and the collision of giant with giant, 
in a grand intellectual struggle. Beman was there, with 
his unfailing flow of plausible ore rotunda oratory and 
metaphor, forcible, if sometimes mixed. McAuley was 
there, with his earnest manner, ready command of lan- 
guage, and somewhat invective style. Peters was there, 
with his small stature, smooth tone, and quiet manner, his 
deep-gray eye that twinkled shrewdness from beneath 
its socket, his imperturbable self- possession, and keen 
readiness to seize upon the weak point of an adversary's 
argument. Dickinson was there, with his taller form, his 
anxious expression, his somewhat positive and blunt 
eloquence, and his deep devotion to the interests of his 
party. Duffield was there, earnest, watchful, and eloquent. 
Cleveland was there, with his fine form, fair complexion, 
bold and forward mien, prompt and outspoken address, 
and impressive eloquence. Judge Jessup was there, with 
his noble countenance, that indicated honesty of convic- 
tion, his earnest manner, astute powers of reasoning, and 
forceful, rugged eloquence. These, with others scarce 
less notable, were present. On the other side was the 
venerable Alexander, slight of stature, quick in move- 
ment, with a keen gray eye that read the soul, with quiet, 
unobtrusive mien, and habitual reticence, except when duty 
bade him speak ; but when he spoke, with his slender, clear 
voice and style of translucent simplicity, all listened, for 
his lips dropped wisdom, and all knew the man to be sin- 
cere. There, too, was Cuyler, tall, slightly stooped, gray- 
headed, with an expression of benevolent gentleness on his 
countenance, the love of truth in his heart, and with lips 
ever prepared to defend it in a style gentle, perspicuous, 



368 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

and firm. Elliott, sedate, judicious, dignified, and prompt, 
occupied the chair. Plumer was there, with his com- 
manding stature and presence, his raven locks, his dark, 
expressive eye, his peculiar eloquence, which swelled to 
the storm, then sank to the gentle murmur of the billow, 
and again came rushing on like the gale-driven surf. 
With less rigid and consecutive logic than some of his 
peers, his wit alternating with awful solemnity of thought 
and manner, combined with fine powers of illustration, 
made him one of the most effective debaters of that great 
occasion. There was Baxter, portly, pleasant, solemn, 
yet genial, with high powers of analysis, a manner of speech 
that commanded attention, and a personal bearing that won 
respect. The patriarch Green was there : large, stately, 
venerable, clear-headed, earnest-hearted, erudite, logical, 
terse and curt in his statements, he possessed great weight 
in the counsels of the Assembly. William Latta was there, 
of medium stature, venerable in years and in wisdom, not 
ready in extempore debate, but the author of one of the 
most impressive arguments delivered upon the doctrinal 
testimony in that Assembly. Robert J. Breckenridge was 
there: the Kentucky gentleman, of rather more than me- 
dium height, slender, well knit, and dignified in bodily 
stature, with a face handsome, expressive, and promptly 
conforming to the dominant emotions, an eye that could 
melt with tenderness, or kindle with scorn, or grow bland 
with frankness and conciliation, with a mind that grasped 
a subject with vigor, perspicuity, and comprehensiveness, 
with a power of verbal criticism that always commanded 
the right word, and often the intensest epithets, and an 
elocution terse, incisive, commanding, and sometimes al- 
most vehement, he was often heard, and always heard when 
he spoke. Breckenridge was a great debater, direct and 
logical, smiting his adversary point-blank, terrible in re- 
tort, and skilful in fending the shafts of an opponent. If 



DR. JUNKIN IN THE ASSEMBLY. 369 

there were defects in his parliamentary qualifications, they 
lay in his impatience with slower minds among his friends, 
when they could not follow him in advance of their con- 
victions, and in a certain impetuosity that gave the impres- 
sion that he aimed to rout his adversaries rather than to 
convince and win them. The subject of this memoir was 
there: of medium stature, but powerful in bone and muscle, 
with a keen black eye, which, in repose, or when under the 
influence of the gentler affections, looked lovingly forth, 
but which beamed brilliantly in obedience to emotional 
impulse, a face of the classic mould of manly comeliness, a 
manner reserved, reticent, almost abstracted, with a ready 
perception of all the phases of the theme of his thoughts, 
discriminating, perspicuous, logical, and comprehensive in 
his grasp of a subject, always ready with the right word, 
with unusual quickness to detect a sophistry, and wondrous 
skill in pulling it to pieces and exposing its useless frag 
ments, his arguments were always forceful, often over- 
whelming. His voice was defective, particularly to the 
ear of strangers, being slender and almost shrill in its 
higher tones. But his elocution was distinct, his manner 
collected and often ardent, and his "faculty of being 
heard," as Dr. R. J. Breckenridge would phrase it, unsur— 
passed. Indeed, Dr. Junkin, with all his defects of voice, 
could be heard farther and more distinctly than most men 
of his day. His custom, in a deliberative body, was not 
to speak often, and not at all unless there seemed to be 
a real need. He took a more active part in the debates 
of this Assembly than was his wont, because his brethren 
asked it. Perfectly at home, and recently practiced in 
doctrinal debate, he was expected to bear his part in 
such discussions. And as he was recognized as one of the 
ablest expounders of the Constitution, it was not unusual 
to hear the younger members, and those less skilled in 
debate, whispering, "Dr. Junkin ought to speak on that 



370 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

constitutional question," or expressions of similar kind. 
Forceful and often brilliant in his illustrations, he lacked 
skill in the witticism of debate, and he rarely attempted 
retort. 

There were other men of mark in that Assembly, whose 
characteristics are remembered after the lapse of thirty- 
four years; but our space will not permit an attempt to 
sketch them. Among the elders on the Old School side, 
were such men as James Lenox, the philanthropist, ex- 
Senator Walter Lowrie, Judge Nathaniel Ewing, and the 
Hon. Samuel C. Anderson, of Virginia. Mr. Lenox, 
although a man of fine mind, scholarly, well read, and a 
safe counsellor, rarely, if ever, attempted public speech. 
Mr. Lowrie spoke seldom, but always sensibly and to the 
purpose. Mr. Ewing was a pleasant speaker, and an 
ingenious debater, and was somewhat prominent. Mr. 
Anderson was a fine speaker, and upon the question of 
the elimination of the Congregational Synods, delivered 
a very powerful argument, which had much influence in 
producing the result. 

After protracted debate, the resolution to abrogate the 
Plan of Union "as unnatural and unconstitutional," and 
productive of abnormal results, was passed by a vote of 143 
ayes to no nays. 

After this was done, various measures were proposed for 
the remedy of existing evils ; but each met with persistent 
opposition from the New School members, and in the 
course of discussion, such practical objections to them were 
discovered as led to their abandonment. One of the first 
of these was moved by Dr. Plumer, to the effect, " that such 
inferior judicatories as are charged by common fame with 
irregularities" be cited to the bar of the next Assembly, 
— that a Committee of investigation and arrangement be 
appointed to ascertain the facts and digest a plan of pro- 
cedure, this Committee to report " as soon as practicable," 



ATTEMPT AT AMICABLE DIVISION. 



371 



— and that the judicatories accused should not vote in 
their own case, or sit pending the process. 

The proposed discipline of non-orderly judicatories was 
resolved upon ; but the vote was by a diminished majority, 
many considering it impracticable. 

The next suggestion was to attempt an amicable division 
of the church. This was made by Dr. R. J. Breckenridge, 
in consequence of a proposition submitted to him by Dr. 
Peters.* This was adopted, and a Committee of each 
party was appointed, — Drs. Breckenridge, Alexander, 
Cuyler, Witherspoon, and Judge Ewing on one side, and 
Drs. McAuley, Beman, Dickinson, and Judge Jessup on 
the other. The Committee and the subject referred to them 
were commended to God, by the Assembly, in prayer led 
by Dr. Baxter. f 

On a subsequent day (May 30) this Committee reported, 
through Dr. Alexander, that they could not agree upon all 
the details. Their minutes showed that in regard to funds, 
corporate succession, seminaries, and the records they came 
to terms. They agreed that the Old School should retain 
the name, and the other be called the American Presby- 
terian Church ; but they failed to agree in regard to an 
immediate division, as to the power of the Assembly to do 
it, and as to breaking off the ecclesiastical succession ; the 
New School insisting that neither body should be the lineal 
successor of the existing body. Thus this measure failed, 
and the Old School thought the other side were aiming to 
secure delay. The Committee was discharged and the sub- 
ject tabled. 

As all hope of an amicable separation seemed ended, 
the majority were forced to choose between decisive action 
or continued strife, with the possibility of being either 
forced to succumb to their opponents, or of being by them 

* Gillett, vol. ii. p. 508. - f Baird's Hist., p. 525. 



372 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

cut off. Indeed, they had proof of the existence of a plan, 
on the part of the New School, quite as decisive as that 
which the Old School adopted, provided the former had 
been in the majority, or could gain a majority next year.* 
It is believed to have been Dr. Baxter, who, in conver- 
sation with Mr. Plumer, Dr. Junkin, Mr. Anderson, and 
some others, suggested that the abrogation of the Plan of 
Union as unconstitutional carried down with it and out of 
the church all those abnormal judicatories that had grown up 
under the operation of that Plan. The Convention being 
called together during the negotiations for voluntary sepa- 
ration, this suggestion was laid before it, and it was resolved 
to apply the principle. When the efforts for amicable sepa- 
ration failed, therefore, Dr. Plumer moved 

"That by the operation of the abrogation of the Plan 
of Union of 1801, the Synod of the Western Reserve is, 
and is hereby declared to be, no longer a part of the Pres- 
byterian Church in the United States of America." 

Dr. Baxter advocated the resolution in an able and earn- 
est speech, in which he cited cases from the civil courts, in 
which the principle was affirmed that what was unconstitu- 
tional was void ab initio. 

Judge Jessup replied to him, denying the constitutional 
power of the Assembly to "cut off" a Synod. He thus 
gave the key-note, which has been followed by his party 
ever since, that an act declaratory of the status of a body 
making an unconstitutional claim to be Presbyterian, is a 
"cutting off" of the body; whereas the Assembly claimed 
that the Synod (so called) never had a constitutional con- 
nection with the Presbyterian Church, and never was 
entitled to representation in the Assembly. 

Dr. McAuley made a pathetic speech, portraying the 
awful consequences of the proposed action, which, he said, 

* Baird's Hist., p. 527. 



DEBATE IN THE ASSEMBLY. 



373 



would be dissolving Synods and Presbyteries, deposing min- 
isters, dissolving churches, and spreading confusion. 

Dr. Plumer replied, denying that any such results would 
follow ; that, as the vast majority of the churches were Con- 
gregational, and the ministers only nominally Presbyterian, 
this separation from the Assembly would not affect the 
standing of ministers or the organization of churches. 

Mr. Cleveland followed, affirming his desire for peace, 
but his determination to resist the proposed action ; and, 
after a speech occupying parts of an evening and morning 
session, he moved to postpone the resolution under debate, 
in order to take up the question of separation in a consti- 
tutional way. 

Dr. Junkin opposed postponement, and advocated the 
resolution. The overwhelming majority of the churches in 
the Synod of the Western Reserve, he declared, were not 
Presbyterian. He pointed to the fact that, on the floor of 
the Assembly, there were fourteen men who represented but 
two Presbyterian churches, and that by this process a body 
of Congregational churches actually held the balance of 
power in the General Assembly, and governed the Presby- 
terian Church, whilst they themselves not only did not sub- 
mit to the constitution and laws of that church, but main- 
tained a constant protest against Presbyterianism. Their 
very existence, in the attitude which they held, was a pro- 
test against Presbyterian government, whilst they claimed 
the right to exercise that government over others. He was 
proceeding to recite the various disorders and doctrinal 
errors which were known to exist in the Synod, when he 
was interrupted by the Rev. Mr. Seward, of the Western 
Reserve, who proposed to testify in favor of the Synod. 

He was asked, "Did you assent to the constitutional 
questions prescribed for ministers at your ordination?" 
He declined answering the question. Dr. Beman inter- 
posed, to relieve Mr. Seward's embarrassment, with the 
32 



374 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKW. 

remark, "Mr. Seward has been interrupted by ques- 
tions." 

The Moderator said, "Mr. Seward requested that he 
might be questioned." 

Mr. Seward said, " I do adopt the Book." 

"Did you do so at your ordination?" To which Mr. 
S. gave no reply. 

Mr. Brown, an elder from the Presbytery of Lorain, 
said, "We have been greatly misrepresented. There are 
thirty Presbyterian churches in our Synod." 

Dr. Cuyler. " There are one hundred and thirty-nine 
churches in the Synod." 

Mr. Brown. "The Confessions used in these churches 
are abstracts of the Presbyterian Confession. My Presby- 
tery consists of twelve churches. I do not know of more 
than one that is strictly Presbyterian." 

Mr. H. Kingsbury, an elder from Cleveland church, said, 
"I have a copy of a certificate given me by the Rev. S. C. 
Aikin, and which I have carried for two years, to show that 
I am an Elder. I got it because I was once a committee- 
man, and sat in the Assembly, where my seat was chal- 
lenged." 

Mr. Breckenridge. " Is he a ruling elder according to 
the Book?" 

Mr. K. " I will answer no questions. I am not on 
trial." 

Mr. Breckenridge. "I am credibly informed that he 
never was an elder, and that there is no Board of Elders in 
his church. I now ask Mr. Kingsbury if he ever adopted 
the Book." 

Mr. Kingsbury. " I answer no questions.'/ 

Dr. Peters afterwards stated that Mr. Kingsbury had au- 
thorized him to explain ; that he had declined answering 
because he was not on trial ; but that he was ordained an 
elder two and a half years before. 



DEBATE IN THE ASSEMBLY. 



375 



Mr. Breckenridge. "Will Mr. Kingsbury now say that 
he ever adopted the Constitution of the Presbyterian 
Church?" 

Mr. Kingsbury. "I answer no questions." 

Mr. B. " That's enough."* 

The discussion was continued by Dr. Peters, Judge Jessup, 
Hon. S. C. Anderson, and Judge Ewing, extending through 
several sessions, after which Mr. Cleveland's motion to 
postpone was lost, and the resolution carried by a vote of 
132 to 105. 

"The Rubicon was now crossed," says Mr. Gillett; 
"the decisive principle had been adopted; and all that 
remained was simply a matter of detail. The majority 
were sure of their ground. They proceeded to perfect 
their work with coolness and deliberation. On Friday a 
resolution was passed ' affirming that the organization and 
operations of the so-called American Home Missionary 
Society, and American Education Society, and its branches 
of whatever name, are exceedingly injurious to the peace 
and purity of the Presbyterian Church. We recommend, 
therefore, that they cease to operate within any of our 
churches.' "f This was carried, 124 to 86. 

The Assembly also declared the Synods of Utica, Geneva, 
and Genesee to be subject to the same rule as had been 
applied to the Synod of the Western Reserve, and that they 
were not a portion of the Presbyterian Church. Vigorous 
resistance to these acts was of course made by the minority, 
and a protracted debate preceded the vote, which stood 
115 to 88. 

In connection with these disowning acts, the Assembly 
assigned, as reasons for them, the original unconstitution- 
ality of the Plan of Union, the abnormal evils it had 
wrought, "the gross disorders which are ascertained to 
have prevailed in those Synods — it being clear to us, that 

* Baird's Hist., pp. 529, 530. 
f History, vol. ii. p. 513. 



376 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

even the Plan of Union itself was never consistently car- 
ried into effect, by those professing to act under it," and 
the manifest impropriety of a people helping to administer 
over others, a government to which they themselves refused 
to submit. 

The Assembly further declared, that "by these resolutions 
they had no intention to affect, in any way, the ministerial 
standing of any members of either of said Synods, nor to 
disturb the pastoral relation in any church, nor to inter- 
fere with the duties or relations of private Christians in 
their respective congregations." 

The Assembly also made provision for such Presbyteries, 
ministers, and churches, in the bounds of those Synods, as 
were truly Presbyterian in doctrine and order, to adhere to 
the church. Presbyteries were directed to make applica- 
tion to the next General Assembly, ministers and churches 
to the Presbyteries most convenient to the several locations 
of the applicants.* 

The Elective Affinity Presbytery (Third) of Philadel- 
phia was also dissolved, and its ministers, licentiates, and 
churches directed to go to the Presbyteries within whose 
limits they were located. This was done on the motion 
of Dr. R. J. Breckenridge. 

The testimony against doctrinal error was also adopted ; 
a Board of Foreign Missions was instituted, in pursuance of 
the treaty with the Western Foreign Missionary Society ;f 
and, in short, the entire system of reform, proposed by the 
memorialists, was adopted. Against all these measures of 
the Assembly Protests were presented, admitted to record, 
and answered, all of which can be seen by the curious in 
the Minutes and in Baird's Assembly's Digest. J 

* Minutes, 1837, p. 440. 

•f" Dr. Junkin was a member of the original Board of Foreign Missions. 
J Dr. Junkin was author of the Answer to the Protest against the Abroga- 
tion of the " Plan of Union." 



LETTER TO THE CHURCHES. 377 

In view of the important and extraordinary measures 
adopted by this Assembly, it was deemed necessary to ex- 
plain to the churches the grounds of this action, and a 
Committee was appointed to prepare a letter addressed to 
the churches of Christ Jesus throughout the earth. Dr. 
R. J. Breckenridge was Chairman of this Committee, and 
doubtless the author of the letter which was adopted. 

This document is a noble specimen of apologetic writing, 
using that adjective in its ancient sense. It is marked by 
a sedate dignity of tone, an elevation of style, a spirituality 
of temper, a lucidness of narrative, and a clearness and 
thoroughness of explanation, which make it admirably 
adapted to its object. It carries with it the conviction, at 
least to all unprejudiced minds, that the writer and his 
brethren who adopted the paper, sincerely and sorrowfully 
felt that, in God's providence, a necessity had been laid 
upon them to do what they had done, and that whilst the 
acts were painful to their hearts as Christians, they were 
right, and had been done in the fear of God. We have 
not space to quote much from this document, and will 
only insert one paragraph, which contains a description 
of the misrepresentations which they sought to correct. 
This is done, because the subject of this memoir, in com- 
mon with the writer of the circular letter, and a few others 
of the Old School leaders, was made an especial target for 
such shafts. Addressing believers throughout the earth, it 
says: 

"You have heard the motives of the friends of truth 
reproached ; their name cast out as evil ; their zeal for 
maintaining the purity of the gospel represented as a mere 
struggle for power ; and all their attempts to detect and 
censure heresy held up to public view as the efforts of rest- 
less and ambitious men to gain the pre-eminence for them- 
selves. Amidst these ineffectual attempts to banish error 
and restore order, vital piety has languished ; mutual confi- 
dence has disappeared ; the reviving and converting influ- 



378 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

ences of the Holy Ghost have been withheld ; and our time 
and strength have been painfully occupied with strife and 
debate, instead of being wholly given to the spread of the 
gospel and the conversion of the world." 

As was to be expected, the defeated party, and those who 
sympathized with them, made loud, acrimonious, widely- 
spread, and persistent outcry against these measures of the 
General Assembly. The terms unconstitutional, unchris- 
tian, arbitrary, tyrannical, and other epithets tending to 
bring them into reproach, were lavishly applied to them. 
The organs of the innovating party, and even portions of 
the secular press, were liberal of their censures. The acts 
of the Assembly were characterized in such a way as to set 
them before the public in the strongest light of reproba- 
tion, as they appeared to the more ardent New School 
brethren. The changes were rung upon '-'excision," the 
"exscinding acts," the enormity of excluding from the 
church four Synods, and so large a number of Presbyteries, 
ministers, churches, and communicants, without citation, 
trial, or conviction ; and although the acts of Assembly 
made very full and specific declarations to the contrary, 
this exclusion was spoken of, much as if the ministers had 
been deposed, the church courts dissolved, and the church- 
members excommunicated. 

Nor was it unreasonable to expect such representations 
to be made by men smarting under defeat, and who really 
and sincerely thought that the Assembly had exerted powers 
not clearly granted in the constitution, — men who looked 
upon matters from an entirely different standpoint, and 
with wholly different feelings and convictions, from those 
of the Old School. And it is due to the truth of history 
to say, that many who were not personally, or by reason 
of denominational connection, involved in the contro- 
versy, men, too, of sound judgment and of acknowledged 
fairness, differed in opinion about the constitutionality of 



SINCERITY OF AIL PARTIES. 



379 



these measures. And whilst it is due to the majority 
(0. S.) to admit, that they acted under a high conscious- 
ness and a profound conviction of the necessity, the con- 
stitutionality, and the righteousness of their acts, and also 
that their measures were adopted with a calmness and 
solemnity that could not have been exhibited in such 
stormy times by men of ordinary mould, it is due to the 
other side to attribute to them similar motives and a like 
sincerity, where there was no proof at the time, and none 
furnished by subsequent events, of a contrary state of things. 
Of the great mass of real Presbyterians then in the New 
School body, nothing impeaching their sincerity can be 
said. But of those who had put on the Presbyterian name 
without adopting the principles of our church, and who, 
after the division of the church, returned to Congregation- 
alism, or continued to perplex the New School Church 
with continued controversy, so charitable a judgment can 
hardly be expressed by a candid historian. 

For another year the church was agitated by the discus- 
sion of these grave issues ; and both parties looked forward 
to the next Assembly with the intensest solicitude. On 
both sides the discussions were warm, able, and earnest ; 
and it would be expecting too much from partially sancti- 
fied human nature to suppose, that in all cases the utmost 
proprieties of Christian controversy were observed. 

The history of the great ecclesiastical struggle which 
resulted in the division of the Presbyterian Church has 
been narrated, with a fulness and detail that might seem 
unnecessary in the biography of a single actor in those 
scenes. But it seemed to the writer impossible to deline- 
ate the part borne in those great events by Dr. Junkin, so 
as to do simple justice to his memory, without narrating 
the whole. Things must be seen in their relations in order 
to be fairly understood. Conduct, in any given set of 
circumstances, cannot be rightly described nor justly esti- 



380 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

mated if the circumstances are unknown. And as the 
same events here narrated have been professedly recorded 
by others, — with what measure of accuracy and fairness the 
public will have to judge, — the writer of this book felt it 
to be his duty to present the facts as collated from the 
documents and records of the church. 

Dr. Junkin was not a member of the General Assembly 
of 1838; and whilst it maybe that he was consulted in 
regard to some of its measures, he was not so identified 
with its acts as to make them a part of his personal history 
to any appreciable extent. It is not, therefore, the design 
of the present writer to carry forward the history of the 
church, in its minute details, beyond the period now 
reached. That was the great crisis ; the actual secession 
that took place the next year was but the result of what had 
been already done. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

Straggles of Lafayette College — Dr. Junkin invited to a Pastorate in Cin- 
cinnati — Declines — Work on Justification — College Printing-Press — ■ 
Prof. Cunningham — The Educator — The Normal School — The Faculty 
— Standard of Scholarship in the College high — Disruption of 1838 — 
Results in Inferior Courts — Dr. Junkin in the Synod of New Jersey — 
Who is responsible for Religious Controversy? — The Results of the 
Great Straggle recapitulated — The Reunion, how brought about — Dr. 
Junkin's Agency. 

IT was deemed most conducive to a lucid arrangement 
of the narrative, to complete the history of the ecclesi- 
astical events, in which Dr. Junkin was more prominently 
concerned, without interrupting it by other incidents. It 
will be necessary to bring up his more private history to 
the same period. 

Whilst Dr. Junkin was lending his strength and influence 
to the great interests of the church, as narrated in the pre- 
vious chapters, his toils and solicitudes in the College 
enterprise were by no means abated ; and serious embar- 
rassments sometimes arose. The want of any endowment 
occasioned ever-recurring pecuniary pressure. The Board 
of Trustees had to incur some debt in order to provide the 
necessary buildings ; and part of this debt was owing to 
the President for money advanced, and as they were unable 
to refund, he sometimes was almost constrained to abandon 
the enterprise for want of means to carry it forward. 
Buoyant in spirit and hopeful, as he was, he at times was 
almost in despair of success. 

On the 27th of August, 1835, he wrote to his old and 
attached friend, the Rev. Robert Steel, of Abington : 

(381) 



382 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

"Our state is critical. Money I must have in a few- 
weeks, or down this institution must go. I have written to 
the brethren in Philadelphia, stating the case, and asking 
co-operation as the only alternative. Ten thousand would 
enable us to go on decently. . . . Now, here, I think, is a 
noble oppoi trinity to do good to our church. Our Board 
are willing to mortgage the College property to any good 
Presbyterians for the sum named, and that will clear us of 
all debt, and leave some two thousand dollars to buy books 
and other necessary appliances. Thus Lafayette may be 
secured forever to the interest of our church. Will not 
the friends of this cause do something ? I have tendered 
to our Board the alternative of stopping finally, at the end 
of the present year (Sept. 23), or of paying me my debt, — 
about $3400. They will pay part in a few days, but this 
will not suffice ; there are other debts that must be met ; 
and we must have books, etc. 

"Now, I am the more anxious to have this matter issued, 
as the Lord has thrown open a door of honorable retreat, 
by an invitation from the First Presbyterian Church of 
Cincinnati, in which Dr. Wilson cordially joins, to become 
co-pastor with him. To leave this enterprise would blast 
the fondest desires of my heart ; but I cannot endure it 
thus. To go on is impossible in the present state of things; 
and I have thrown the responsibility upon a few brethren 
in the city ; and this I had done before I knew of the offer 
from the West. My friends here say that if I go the 
College must fall, or pass into different hands, and those, 
probably, our enemies. 

"Now, my dear brother, I wish you would go on Mon- 
day and attend the meeting at Dr. Green's,* and have 
some talk about it ; and if encouraged, I will go down 
again." 

Relief was obtained to some extent ; but not in such 
measure as would have induced a man of less perseverance 
than Dr. Junkin to continue the struggle. 

The invitation from the First Church of Cincinnati and 
its venerable Pastor was very urgent. The correspondence, 



Ministers' Prayer-Meeting. 



WORK ON JUSTIFICATION. 383 

still on file, indicates a very strong desire to obtain Dr. 
Junkin's services ; but his heart was set upon educating 
men for the Ministry, and he gave a respectful negative to 
the call. 

At the request of his friends, Dr. R. J. Breckenridge 
and Rev. A. B. Cross, — the Editors of the Baltimore Reli- 
gious and Literary Magazine, — Dr. Junkin contributed a 
series of articles to that monthly on "The Moral Govern- 
ment of God." These constituted the basis of his Treatise 
on Justification, the first edition of which he published in 
1839. Of this treatise the Princeton Review remarked, 
that its title was too modest, and was a misnomer, for that, 
instead of being simply a Treatise upon Justification, it was 
really a compact and complete system of Theology. It 
does not become the present writer to speak of its merits ; 
but he will say this much, that he knows of no book in 
which the Calvinistic theology is stated so succinctly, yet 
so fully, lucidly, and suggestively, as in this small volume. 
The arrangement is philosophical, one part following the 
other accordantly with the laws of mind, "so that every 
preceding vehicle, with its treasure, has a certain aptitude 
to draw after it the one precisely adapted to it, and which 
will secure a similar sequence." In this, as in all his works, 
Dr. Junkin's . method of expounding Scripture is the in- 
ductive, — collating all the passages where a term is used, 
and thus making Scripture the interpreter of Scripture. 
He demonstrates in this book that the doctrines of the 
Bible, embraced in the great question of justification, con-" 
tain the essence of all morality, and form the substratum 
of all sound social, .civil, and political government ; that 
there are not two systems of morals, one for the Christian 
and one for the citizen, but one system only, and that 
covering the entire existence of the man in all his relations 
and all his duties; hence the name first given to the Essays, 
— "The Moral Government of God." In this volume the 



384 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

metaphysics of theology is so popularized and simplified, 
that no unsophisticated reader would suppose there is any 
metaphysics in the book ; proving that sound, even pro- 
found, philosophy is nothing more than common sense. 
The objections to the distinctive doctrines of grace are 
answered with very satisfactory conclusiveness, and on this 
and other accounts theological students and private Chris- 
tians have found it one of the most convenient and reliable 
hand-books. 

He added to the work a chapter upon Sanctification ; but, 
later in life, he prepared a separate treatise upon that sub- 
ject. It so happened that several young men were in the 
College who had learned the art of printing ; and with a 
view to give them employment, and at the same time 
increase the means of disseminating educational knowledge, 
and promote both common-school and collegiate education, 
Dr. Junkin purchased a printing-press and complete set of 
types. His book upon Justification (1st edition) was printed 
on the College press, the work being done by students ; 
and he commenced a periodical called "The Educator," 
which was under his editorial control, assisted by the Pro- 
fessors of the College, and other contributors. The book 
on Justification was published under the imprimatur of a 
Philadelphia publishing house, although all the printing 
and press-work were done in the College by students. 

The immediate occasion of the establishment of a printing- 
press in connection with the College, was the desire of the 
President to engraft upon the usual college system a branch 
for the especial training of teachers for Academies and com- 
mon schools. It has already been mentioned, that Dr. 
Junkin felt and manifested a lively interest in the system of 
general education then being inaugurated in Pennsylvania, 
and that he bore an efficient part in promoting it. From 
1836 to 1840 there was much discussion of teaching, and 
its modes and appliances. The great want, universally felt, 



PROFESSOR CUNNINGHAM. 



385 



was that of competent teachers, who could be induced to 
make teaching a profession. The impossibility of retain- 
ing the services of competent teachers with the low com- 
pensation usually paid ; the defects of school-houses and 
school apparatus ; indeed, the entire subject of education, 
were extensively discussed, both on the rostrum and through 
the press. In these discussions, Dr. Junkin, in Pennsylvania, 
and his younger brother, in New Jersey, bore some part. 
But there was no medium of communication with the pub- 
lic, through which such discussions could be regularly and 
effectively carried on ; and Dr. Junkin had for some time 
been pondering the propriety of attempting to supply this 
want by the establishment of an educational journal. 

His determination to attempt it was rendered definitive 
by the arrival of a Scotch gentleman of mature scholarship, 
who desired to prosecute in this country the business which 
he had pursued in his own, — that of an educator. This 
gentleman, Professor William Cunningham, was a licensed 
preacher of the gospel, but had consecrated his powers to 
the important work of improving the modes of education. 

About the time of his arrival in this country, the Chair 
of Languages in Lafayette College was vacant, and it 
was tendered to Mr. Cunningham. As it was his great 
aim to be a teacher of teachers, he was unwilling to accept 
such a Professorship as that offered, except with the ulti- 
mate expectation of being placed in connection with a 
Normal School for the training of teachers. Upon the 
subject of elevating the standard of common-school educa- 
tion, and improving the attainments and skill of teachers, 
Mr. Cunningham was an enthusiast. He had visited some 
of the most improved institutions of the Old World, and 
made himself familiar with the theories and the practice 
of teaching, and was seeking for an opportunity to make 
his knowledge available. In Dr. Junkin he met a brother 
enthusiast in his favorite field, and, for the sake of securing 
33 



386 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

the services of so valuable an auxiliary, the President of the 
College determined to make Lafayette, if possible, a foun- 
tain whence streams should flow to refresh and fertilize the 
field of common-school education as well as that of other 
professions. 

To accomplish this it was not difficult to get the neces- 
sary action on the part of the Board of Trustees. And 
when this was attained, two other means to the desired end 
were to be provided, — a Periodical to reach the public mind 
with healthy light upon the subject of education, and a 
model school in which teachers could be trained in the arts 
of teaching and pedagogics, whilst they were acquiring the 
requisite knowledge in the College classes. But the College 
had no funds to be used for such a purpose ; and, with the 
hope of ultimate reimbursement for the model school, Dr. 
Junkin, with his private means, erected, upon the College 
grounds, the stone edifice still standing, the first story to 
be used as a Laboratory and chemical and philosophical 
Lecture-room, the upper story to be devoted to the purposes 
of a Normal School. This was the first institution of the 
kind in the Commonwealth, and, so far as known to the 
writer, the first in the country. During the erection and 
furnishing of the Normal School, Professor Cunningham 
occupied, with marked ability and efficiency, the Chair of 
Languages ; the arrangement being that he should assume 
the superintendence of the normal institution when it was 
ready for pupils. 

Meanwhile the press was bought, and "The Educator" 
issued, in a bi-monthly folio, and it was filled with most 
valuable matter, not only upon the subject of education, 
but of general science and art. Mr. Cunningham was 
associated with Dr. Junkin in the editorship, and contri- 
buted very valuable matter for its columns, but the burden 
of details, and much of the editorial, rested upon Dr. 
Junkin. Nor did he, with these additional labors, abat° 



FACULTY OF LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 



387 



anything of his toils in the regular routine or the extra de- 
mands of the College. 

It was in the autumn of 1837, that Professor Cunningham 
came to Lafayette. Professor Kuhn had resigned and gone 
to Georgia, and Mr. Cunningham was elected in his place. 
The College was still growing in numbers and in public 
favor. The Legislature of the State was induced to extend 
aid to it and some others, on condition of their making 
certain provisions for the education of teachers; and there 
seemed, at one time, a fair prospect that the profession of 
teaching would be elevated to the position to which it is 
entitled beside the other learned professions, by the system 
proposed by Dr. Junkin, of connecting the training of 
teachers with the curriculum of Colleges. The partial fail- 
ure of the scheme will be accounted for hereafter. 

At the time of Prof. Cunningham's accession, the Fac- 
ulty of the College consisted of the President; the Vice- 
President (Mr. C.) and Professor of Ancient Languages; 
Washington McCartney, Esq., Professor of Mathematics; 
Traill Green, M.D., Professor of Chemistry and Natural 
Philosophy ; the Rev. Frederick Schmidt, Professor of 
Modern Languages; Hon. James M. Porter, Professor of 
Law ; and the writer of these pages, Professor of the Belles- 
Lettres ; all, except Mr. Cunningham, having occupied 
their places for some time previous. The President was 
Professor of Logic, Mental and Moral Science, Political 
Economy, and the Evidences of Christianity. Mr. Mc- 
Cartney had held the same position in Jefferson College, — 
and is the author of a valuable book on exact science. _ Dr. 
Green was a physician, then young, but of eminent scien- 
tific attainments ; and he is still, after the lapse of thirty- 
five years, connected with the institution. Mr. Schmidt 
was a German, and a man of ripe scholarship and fine 
mind. Col. Porter was a man of marked ability, and was 
an eminent practitioner at the Bar. The Professor of Belles- 



388 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Lettres was Pastor of a neighboring congregation ; and 
gave his services gratuitously, for the sake of helping on 
with the College enterprise. 

Already had Lafayette College sent forth sons who have 
made their mark in the country and in the world, in the 
various learned Professions and in other lines of life ; and 
had either the justice of the Legislature or the liberality of 
private individuals supplied the pecuniary means, that In- 
stitution would have much earlier assumed the position 
which she now occupies. As it was, the number of her 
students increased, her classes grew larger, and it was 
acknowledged that her Alumni compared very favorably in 
scholarship and mental maturity with those of other insti- 
tutions. On one occasion, when the writer of this memoir 
was at Princeton, the venerable Dr. Alexander said to him, 
"Tell your brother that I congratulate him, and the mem- 
bers of his Faculty, upon the fine character and high schol- 
arship of the students who have come from Lafayette to 
our Seminary." This, from a man who rarely paid com- 
pliments and was the very impersonation of sincerity, was 
no inconsiderable praise. 

The disruption of the Presbyterian Church took place 
in May, 1838. Of that Assembly Dr. Junkin was not a 
member; and it is not necessary, upon these pages, to 
detail at large the incidents of that unpleasant scene. The 
Assembly met in the Seventh Presbyterian Church, the 
same one in which they had held the sessions of the pre- 
vious year. The edifice of that church, sometimes called 
"The Tabernacle," stood near the centre of the square 
which is bounded on the north and south by Market and 
Chestnut Streets, and east and west by Fourth and Fifth 
Streets. It was reached by a narrow avenue called Ran- 
stead Court, extending west from Fourth Street, to the 
church, and no farther. There was attached to the church 
at that time a small cemetery, densely filled with graves, 



GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1838. 389 

and covered with tomb-stones. The edifice itself, the tomb- 
stones, and the bodies of the dead which they covered, 
have all disappeared ; and the locality, so interesting in 
the history of the Presbyterian Church, would scarcely be 
recognized by the actors in the scenes which marked the 
Assemblies of 1834, 1837, and 1838. 

The General Assembly of 1838 met in that place on the 
17th of May, at n o'clock, and was opened with a sermon 
by the Rev. Dr. David Elliott, from Isaiah lx. 1, "Arise, 
shine," etc. After the sermon, the Moderator constituted 
the Assembly with prayer, and directed the Clerk to read 
the roll. The Rev. Wm. Patton, a commissioner from the 
Third Presbytery of New York, rose and asked leave to 
offer certain resolutions. 

The Moderator declared the request to be out of order 
at that time, as the first business was the report of the 
Clerks on the roll. In narrating this decision of the Mod- 
erator, Mr. Gillett omits the important words "at this time" 
with what follows. 

Dr. Patton appealed from this decision. The Moderator 
declared the appeal, for the reason already stated, to be 
out of order at that time ; as there was no constituted 
Assembly to which the appeal could be made, it not being 
known who, of the crowded congregation, were members 
and who not members of the General Assembly. Dr. Pat- 
ton stated that the resolutions related to the formation of 
the rolls, and began to read them ; but, being called to 
order, took his seat. 

The Clerks then reported the roll, and also the names 
of sundry commissioners whose credentials were incom- 
plete. After this was done, the Moderator stated that 
the commissioners whose names had thus been reported 
were members of the Assembly ; and that if there were 
any commissioners present, from Presbyteries in connec- 
tion with the Assembly, whose names had not been 



39° 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 



enrolled, then was the time for presenting their commis- 
sions. 

Dr. Erskine Mason rose, as he said, to offer a resolution 
"to complete the roll," by adding the names of certain com- 
missioners who, he said, had presented their commissions 
to the Clerks, and had been by them refused. The Mod- 
erator inquired if they were from Presbyteries belonging 
to the Assembly at the close of the sessions of last year. 
Dr. Mason replied that they were from Presbyteries belong- 
ing to the Synods of Utica, Geneva, Genesee, and the 
Western Reserve. The Moderator stated that the resolu- 
tion was out of order at that time.* Dr. Mason appealed 
from the decision of the Moderator ; which appeal, also, 
the Moderator declared to be out of order, and repeated 
the call for commissioners in connection with the Assembly. 

The Rev. Miles P. Squier, a member of the Presbytery 
of Geneva, then rose, and stated that he had a commission 
from the Presbytery of Geneva, which he had presented to 
the Clerks, who refused to receive it, and that he now 
offered it to the Assembly, and claimed his right to his 
seat. The Moderator inquired if that Presbytery belonged 
to the Synod of Geneva. Mr. Squier replied that it did. 
The Moderator then said, "Then we do not know you, 
sir," and declared the application out of order. 

Mr. Cleveland then rose, and began to read a paper, 
the purport of which was not heard, when the Moderator 
called him to order. Mr. Cleveland, however, persisted 
in the reading, notwithstanding the repeated call to order. 
During the reading the Rev. Joshua Moore, from the Pres- 
bytery of Huntingdon, presented a commission, and was 
enrolled, and took his seat. 

It was then moved to appoint a Committee of elections, 
to which informal commissioners might be referred. But 

* See Digest, book iv. $ 108. 



DISRUPTION OF 1838. 39I 

the reading by Mr. Cleveland still continuing, and the 
Moderator having in vain again called to order, and taken 
his seat, and the residue of the Assembly remaining silent, 
the business was suspended during the short but painful 
scene of confusion and disorder which ensued. After 
which, the actors therein having left the house, the Assem- 
bly resumed its business.* 

The account given of this same transaction, by Mr. Gil- 
lett, the New School historian, is as follows. After nar- 
rating the declaration of the Moderator to Mr. Squier, 
" We do not know you, sir," he says : 

" Upon this Mr. John P. Cleveland, of the Presbytery of 
Detroit, rose, and, amid much interruption and many calls 
to order, proceeded to read a paper which he held in his 
hand. The contents of it were, substantially, that whereas 
the rights of certain commissioners have been violated, in 
their being refused their seats as members of the General 
Assembly, and the Moderator has refused to do his duty, 
it therefore becomes necessary to organize this General 
Assembly at this time, and in this place, in the most 
prompt manner, and with the least interruption practica- 
ble. To this they had been advised by counsel learned in 
the law, as a measure necessary to retain their rights in the 
Presbyterian Church. 

" He then moved that Dr. Beman, Moderator of a pre- 
vious Assembly, f take the chair till another Moderator 
should be chosen. The motion was carried by ' a very 
loud aye.' Dr. Beman took his station in the aisle of the 
church, and a motion was made that E. Mason and E. W. 
Gilbert be the clerks, which was agreed to. Dr. S. Fisher 
was, in like manner, elected Moderator. The questions 
were moved and taken both affirmatively and negatively, 
with but few negative voices. It was then moved that the 
Assembly, as thus constituted, adjourn to the First Pres- 
byterian Church. This motion was carried. 

" The members of the body then withdrew from the 
house. It was announced, in a loud voice, at the doors, 

* Minutes, 1838, pp. 3-7. f 1831. 



392 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

and in the body of the house, that the Assembly had ad- 
journed to the First Presbyterian (Mr. Barnes') Church." 

Such, as described in a history published by authority 
of the New School Committee of Publication, was the 
tumultuous and unprecedented process by which these 
brethren sought to constitute themselves the General As- 
sembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. 
The noise and confusion were such, that it was difficult for 
those not in the counsels of the actors therein fully to know 
what was going on. It might be interesting to put on 
record here, as descriptive of the scene, the testimony of 
some of the witnesses, given under oath, upon the trial in 
Nisi Prius. That of the venerable Samuel Miller, D.D., 
Professor in Princeton Seminary, will, however, be suffi- 
cient. After describing his presence and position in the 
church edifice, and stating that he was not a commissioner, 
he says : 

"Mr. Cleveland rose, and held a paper in his hand, 
which he seemed to be attempting to read. There were 
cries of order. He began in a loud voice, but seemed to 
experience a great deal of difficulty in proceeding. The 
contents of the paper, so far as I heard them, were, that 
they had been advised by counsel learned in the law, that 
at that time and place they must organize a new body, and 
that they would proceed, in as few words, in as short a 
time, and with as little discourtesy as possible, to do so ; 
and he moved that Dr. Beman take the chair. That is the 
amount of what I heard. Then there was a great deal of 
tumult, and disorder, and calls to order. What Mr. Cleve- 
land said appeared to be by no means distinctly uttered. 
With the exception of a few calls to order, all the tumult 
was in that part of the house where Mr. Cleveland was. 
1 heard no vocal utterance in other parts of the house, ex- 
cepting the calls to order. The nays were not called for 
on either of Mr. Cleveland's motions. After moving, 
without reversing the question, that Dr. Beman should take 
the chair, he made, I think, a similar motion, also without 
reversing it, that Dr. Mason and Mr. Gilbert should be 



TESTIMONY OF WITNESSES. 



393 



clerks. After these resolutions had passed, that is, after 
the ayes, which came principally from that part of the 
house, had been called for, Dr. Beman immediately stepped 
out into the aisle, and appeared to place himself in the 
situation of a presiding officer. The whole body of those 
engaged in these proceedings moved down the aisle, near 
the door opposite to the pulpit. I afterwards heard a con- 
fused murmur, but no distinct, articulate sounds ; what 
words were spoken, or with what result, I am wholly un- 
able to testify from my own knowledge. . . . The 
great body of the Old School occupied the part of the 
church where I stood. ... I think I was standing in 
the midst of that body. I heard no vote from this part 
of the house. So far as I could see and hear, not a single 
man of the Old School, in the whole house, voted. I 
heard no negative votes on any of the motions. When the 
vote ' aye' was given, there was a character about it that 
convinced me that a number in the gallery had voted. 
These were sharp, shrill cries, which I could not believe 
came from considerate, dignified, and serious men. I took 
it for granted that they came from the gallery and from the 
boys about. This, however, was my own inference. There 
was a certain character about the ayes that I had been al- 
together unaccustomed to." 

Rev. I. V. Brown, testifying to the same point, says : 

"I think there were voices from the gallery, and voices 
that clearly manifested that they did not belong to mem- 
bers of the Assembly. They were shrill and squeaking, 
more like female voices, or, if not so, came from minor 
youth." 

Several of the witnesses testify, that many of those who 
joined in the movement with Mr. Cleveland and Dr. Be- 
man, were standing on the seats, and some on the backs 
of the pews ; that the galleries responded, and that the 
whole process was one of indescribable confusion. 

It was the Rev. Mr. Edward Beecher, of Jackson Sem- 
inary, according to the testimony of Samuel P. Wilson 
and Jerome Twitchell, who returned to the door, after the 



394 LIp E OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

mass of the New School had retired, and repeated the an- 
nouncement that the General Assembly had adjourned to 
the First Church ; the same being proclaimed by another 
and more elderly person at another door.* And it is a 
noteworthy fact, as the testimony shows, that the most 
active and forward men in this odd ecclesiastical coup de 
main were men of New England origin, of Congrega- 
tional prepossessions, and some of whom afterwards left the 
New School Body and returned whence they had come. 

The persons who thus withdrew repaired to Mr. Barnes' 
church, and entered upon their mission as a separate branch 
of the Presbyterian Church. 

The General Assembly, after the withdrawal, proceeded 
with its business, and from that time forth its counsels 
were marked by great harmony, and its enterprises prose- 
cuted with an energy previously unknown. 

The year intervening between the General Assembly of 
1837 and that of 1S38, was of course a year of prepara- 
tion, especially on the part of the New School party. 
Conventions had ceased to be, in their estimation, such 
disorderly and unconstitutional gatherings, and they held 
no less than five during the year: one in Mr. Barnes' 
church, immediately after the adjournment of the Assem- 
bly of 1837; another, soon after, at New York; a third 
at Albany, N. Y., on the 17th of August; a fourth at Ann 
Arbor, Michigan, at the close of the same month ; and a 
fifth in Mr. Barnes' church, Philadelphia, on the Monday 
evening (May 14) previous to the meeting of the Assembly 
of 1838. 

At these, and especially at the latter, the programme 
which was carried out on the morning of the 17th was 
definitely settled upon, and the dramatis persona, selected. 
The Old School also held a convention, at the same time, 

* Miller's Report of Church Case, pp. 173, 175, 177, 181. 



PASTORAL LETTER TO THE CHURCHES. 



395 



in Ranstead Court. The former sent a deputation to the 
latter, proposing " to open a friendly correspondence, for 
the purpose of ascertaining if some constitutional terms of 
pacification might not be agreed upon." But as, in their 
communication, they assumed that the disowning acts were 
unconstitutional, and the Old School refused to admit that 
they were so, no understanding was reached. The results 
have been mentioned above. 

The General Assembly was, of course, placed under the 
necessity of taking such measures as were called for by this 
new state of things, and they proceeded to do it with great 
calmness, deliberation, and wisdom. They first placed 
upon record, after calling the roll, the names of those com- 
missioners who, having been enrolled, had gone off, and 
directed that they be reported to their several Presbyteries. 
They then appointed a Committee to report measures for 
the pacification of the church, the adjustment of all ques- 
tions that might arise, and changes that might be required 
by the dismemberment. 

This Committee, of which Dr. R. J. Breckenridge was 
the chairman, reported a voluminous paper, marked by 
great forecast and practical wisdom, prescribing methods 
for the details of separation, such as would secure adhe- 
rence to the church of all really Presbyterian and congenial 
elements, and facilitate the withdrawal of such as could 
not be amicably and constitutionally retained. A long 
and well-considered pastoral letter was also proposed, and 
addressed to the churches, reciting the events that had oc- 
curred, and exhorting to the exercise of Christian wisdom 
and charity in the trying circumstances in which the church 
was now placed. 

The carrying out of the acts of the Assembly, in the 
several Synods and Presbyteries, was attended with some 
practical difficulties, in those Synods especially in which 
there was an admixture of the two parties. In the Synod 



396 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

of New Jersey, of which Dr. Junkin was a member, there 
was some embarrassment in the enforcing of the Assem- 
bly's behests. A part of that Synod was New School, and 
yet the New Theology had not spread to such an extent as 
it had in other quarters. Many of the men who were de- 
cidedly with the New School in feeling and action, were 
considered sound and valuable men; and the "middle 
men" of the Synod, pretty numerous as they were, seem 
to have clung to the hope that, by treating the New School 
Presbyteries with forbearance, they might be induced to 
remain with the General Assembly. In this hope the de- 
cided Old School men did not share. They knew that 
conciliation would be thrown away, and that a failure to 
carry out the directions of the General Assembly would 
only lead to injurious complications, without any counter- 
vailing benefit. The Presbyteries of Montrose, Newark, 
and a few churches and pastors in other Presbyteries, ex- 
pected and intended to go out ; but they came to the Synod, 
were enrolled, and awaited the process of "excision." 
Their policy, as was supposed, was to get put out, and, if 
possible, in a way to secure to themselves the popular sym- 
pathy. A large portion of the Synod wished to avoid this 
process, and let them go out at their own convenience. Dr. 
Junkin was in favor of simple straightforward obedience to 
the directions of the Assembly; and when a set of resolu- 
tions of a delaying and, as he considered, a temporizing 
character were proposed, he opposed them earnestly. He 
considered them as nullifying the acts of the Assembly, 
and jeoparding the very existence of the Synod ; and 
when they were passed, he withdrew from the body and 
went home. 

The friends of these resolutions discovered, when too 
late, that Dr. Junkin was right in his prognostications; 
that, so far from being conciliated by these measures, the 
New School members both voted against them, and pre- 



RESULTS OF THE DISRUPTION. 



397 



sented a protest against them, in which they entered into 
an argument to prove that the General Assembly to which 
this Synod adhered was not a "valid Assembly," nor the 
Synod itself, thus adhering to said Assembly, a "valid" 
Synod. The writer of this book had gone with the majority 
of the Synod (a small one) in adopting the conciliatory 
minute, differing from his brother upon this question ; 
but was afterwards convinced that obedience to the supreme 
judicatory would have been the wiser course. It was a 
time of great perplexity and of much excitement, and good 
men did not know which policy was the best. 

The results of the disruption of the church have been in 
part stated in a former chapter. A few additional effects 
of it may now, with propriety, be indicated, as illustrating 
the wonderful kindness of the Head of the Church in over- 
ruling present evils so as to make them productive of greater 
good, and as vindicating the course pursued in these agi- 
tations by the subject of this memoir, and those great and 
good men with whom he acted. 

Doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversy, if not evil in 
itself, is apt to evolve serious evils by reason of the infirmi- 
ties of the men who engage in it. Controversy is a neces- 
sary condition of the mission of the church of God in this 
world. That mission is essentially aggressive. The church, 
in the present state, is militant. Conquest is her aim, — 
the conquest of a world that is in a state of rebellion 
against God and His Christ. And until the last rebel is 
subdued, the controversy between light and darkness, holi- 
ness and sin, God and Satan, the church and her foes, must 
go on. In this warfare it is sadly, eminently true, as pre- 
dicted by the Great Captain, that "a man's foes shall be 
they of his own household." It has been the misfortune 
and the sin of the Christian brotherhood that they will 
often "fall out by the way." Disputes arise about drill, 
and discipline, the weapons and the material of the 
34 



398 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

warfare, and the best modes of using them ; and hence the 
ranks are often thrown into disorder, and instead of bat- 
tling with the common foe, they get into contention with 
one another. 

The great instrument of conquest is "the sword of the 
Spirit, which is the word of God," — truth. No other 
weapon will avail to gain a single valuable victory. " Sanc- 
tify them through thy truth : thy word is truth. ' ' And just in 
proportion as truth is perverted or amalgamated 'with error, 
is the temper of the sword of the Spirit impaired, and its 
edge blunted. Knowing this, the Spirit of inspiration has 
commanded his ministers to "earnestly contend for the 
faith which was once delivered to the saints."* And if 
some of them are not contented with the faith thus once 
delivered, and think they can improve it, and make the 
effort, upon them rests the responsibility of inaugurating 
controversy. 

Controversy between professed believers is an almost 
unmitigated evil ; but the blame of it rests upon the 
errorist, not upon the defender of the faith. And yet the 
world is apt to reproach the defender of the faith, who 
resists the propagation of error, as the author of all the 
disturbance occasioned by religious controversy. It has 
not unfrequently occurred, in the history of the church, 
that the faithful men who stand for truth and purity, are 
traduced for their very faithfulness, whilst the errorists, 
whom they opposed, are the objects of public sympathy 
whilst they live, and the subjects of eulogy, and almost of 
apotheosis, when they die. 

In the controversies that resulted in the sundering of the 
Presbyterian Church in 1838, there was no doubt much on 
both sides that was to be deplored. Ministers and elders 
are men of like passions with others, and it would not have 

* Jude 3. 



LOYALTY TO THE STANDARDS. 



399 



been reasonable to expect, nor would it now be historical 
truth to record, that there were no unhappy exhibitions of 
human temper and conduct in the progress of the conflict. 
There was much more than it is deemed necessary to record. 
The rules of manly and Christian contest were not always 
observed. Those who strove for the mastery did not always 
strive lawfully ; and sometimes there were departures from 
magnanimity and fair dealing, which, no doubt, the men 
themselves lived to deplore. But in view of all that was 
wrong and humiliating, facts, already developed in the 
results of the struggle, warrant the belief that greater good, 
to both branches of the church, and now to the whole 
church reunited, has been brought out of these agitations, 
than probably would have been reached without them. 

The opinion has already been expressed, and the facts 
adduced to support it, that doctrinal error, in the Presby- 
terian Church, had reached its aphelion at the termination 
of the Barnes trial ; and that ever since, either by the force 
of conviction or the force of circumstances, there has been 
a gradual return towards the truth, until now, with a few 
eccentric exceptions, the church and her ministry move in 
the normal orbit. The Assembly that restored Mr. Barnes 
to the exercise of his ministry felt constrained, either by 
conviction or policy, — we decide not which, — to make a 
most explicit declaration of loyalty to the Standards. And 
even if we surmise that, with some of the leaders, it was a 
matter of policy, it would be uncharitable to suppose that 
this motive could pervade the whole body of the majority. 
The strong presumption is that the larger number of the 
New School brethren joined in that declaration sincerely, 
and felt bound, as candid men, to make it good in their 
future preaching and practice. And even the leaders would 
be restrained from language and conduct inconsistent with 
the declaration ; for a contrary course would have shaken 
the confidence of their followers in their integrity. In 



4 oo LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

truth, even those men felt that the declarations in which 
they had joined, held them to a more respectful treatment 
of the Confession and the Form of Government than they 
had been accustomed to render. 

And after the disruption, and the formation of the 
" Constitutional" General Assembly, and particularly after 
the suit at Law was commenced, all the external circum- 
stances of the New School body operated in a direction 
favorable to the Standards. A body claiming, par excellence, 
to be the "Constitutional General Assembly" of the Pres- 
byterian Church, would feel especially called upon to treat 
the Constitution with respect, and to avoid all appearance 
of violating its provisions. A body claiming the control 
of the property of the Presbyterian Church, as the Assem- 
bly in legal succession, must be careful to respect the doc- 
trine and order which the world knew that church had 
always maintained. And although it was not in all cases 
done, yet the necessities of their position created a tend- 
ency in a right direction. And when it is remembered, 
that the great mass of them were sound, good men, who 
had been led into the attitude which they occupied by the 
accident of position, the force of an amiable, if misplaced, 
sympathy, and by the shrewd management of adroit and 
able leaders, the return to "the old paths" will appear to 
have been inevitable. Besides, these circumstances which 
trammelled the energies of those who were desirous of 
revolutionizing the church, at the same time strengthened 
the hands of the large portion of the body which was 
really Presbyterian, and gave them the ascendency. 

It is also undoubtedly true, that the agitating discussions 
of the doctrinal questions roused men's minds to fresh in- 
quiry, stimulated thought and research, and led to a more 
thorough comparison of the system of doctrines laid down 
in the Standards with the Bible, and all this promoted the 
spread of sound principles, and the triumph of truth. 



RESULTS OF THE GREAT STRUGGLE. 401 

The discussion of constitutional , questions of church 
order also led to a more thorough understanding and a 
higher appreciation of our admirable system of govern- 
ment. And when, at last, the force of that system was 
exhibited in the measures of reform, and a demonstration 
was made of the recuperative energy of Presbyterianism, 
the confidence of the sons of the church in her system of 
government was increased, whilst those who had taunted 
her with the charge of imbecility were forced to recall 
their sneers. 

There can be no reasonable doubt, that what the storm 
does for the atmosphere the great struggle for truth and 
order did for the Presbyterian Church, — restored purity, 
health, and vigor. By that struggle, a tendency to doc- 
trinal error, laxity in discipline, and extravagance in 
measures, was certainly arrested. And ever since the cul- 
minating moment both branches have been waxing stronger 
in the Lord. If there was "dead orthodoxy" in the Old 
School, the Spirit of God made use of the agitation to 
quicken it to life. If there was a disposition in the New 
School to charge the church's inefficiency upon her ortho- 
doxy, and to adopt some modifications of sound doctrine, 
with a view to make truth more palatable to the carnal 
mind, in order to facilitate conversions, the danger and 
inexpediency of the experiment were exposed ; and from 
the moment of the culmination of the struggle there was 
a palpable abandonment of the specious schemes, and a 
gradual return to that truth which only is the instrument 
of salvation. 

It is on record that the New School branch, on all proper 
occasions, began to testify in favor of the Standards 
and the Constitution ; and whilst they claimed a certain 
latitude of interpretation, and showed a disposition to 
tolerate sporadic cases of error, which the Old School did 
not, still there was a steady return towards the point of 
34* 



4 o2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

original divergence. It is on record, and in stereotype, 
that Dr. Beecher and Mr. Barnes modified their publica- 
tions, so as to make them less objectionable to the ortho- 
dox. In regard to the latter it was plead in his behalf, 
at his trial before the General Assembly, that he had made 
these alterations; and although these changes did not meet 
the wishes of the Old School, still they made his publica- 
tions less objectionable. And it is worthy of remark that, 
after the reunion, that distinguished writer considerately 
withdrew such of his doctrinal books as were published 
by the ''Committee of Publication," so as to disembar- 
rass the united Board of Publication in the readjustment 
of their catalogue.* 

The whole result is that the two branches, whilst 
apart, probably made more effective aggressive progress 
than they would have done had they remained united, — 
certainly more than they would if they had continued 
together in a state of internal war. Sound Presbyterianism 
was revived, both as regards doctrine and order. A glo- 
rious Foreign Missionary enterprise was begun by the Old 
School. The New School, in the progress of events, were 
relieved of many disturbing and enfeebling elements by 
the sloughing off, or the assimilation, of Congregational 
material. By this process they became more thoroughly 
Presbyterian, and at the same time more homogeneous 
and effective as an ecclesiastical organization. And when 
the great Head of the Church had, by means of these 

* Since the above was written, the following notice of the tenth edition 
of the NOTES ON Romans appeared in the Presbyterian of April 15, 1871 : 

"This book created at its first appearance an immense excitement, and 
helped forward the division of the Presbyterian Church. Its reappearance 
will not make a ripple on the surface. Mr. Barnes made a number of 
changes in the fifth edition, and rewrote some pages, withdrawing many 
words and phrases which had given offence. He left standing, however, 
m my erroneous interpretations, and some which no change but entire 
abandonment would cure." 



UNION IN THE TRUTH. 403 

agitations, purged both branches, so as to fit them for 
bearing more and better fruit, He prepared the way, in His 
wondrous providence, for reingrafting both into the same 
old stock, to the praise of the glory of His grace. Unity 
and peace in the truth is the grand result ! 

And this was the end set forth by George Junkin, in 
his first letter to Mr. Barnes, proposing an amicable trial 
of the doctrinal issue. ' ' The object is peace through 
union in the Truth !" Let the fair and candid philoso- 
pher of history decide, in view of all the recorded events, 
whether that " object" has been gained. And whilst 
his biographer asks nothing for the subject of this memoir, 
except that justice which a consideration of his self-deny- 
ing, faithful, and arduous services in the cause of truth and 
order demands, he cannot doubt that his memory will long 
live in the hearts of those who love the purity and peace 
of Zion. 

" What hath God wrought !" A glorious union in the 
truth, upon the simple basis of our Standards, has been 
reached ; — one of the most wonderful events in the history 
of the Church of Christ. Is the history of this union to 
be written, and the causes which rendered it necessary ig- 
nored? Can that history be fairly, truthfully written, 
whilst the causes which produced that homogeneousness in 
doctrine and order, which rendered a reunion possible and 
desirable, lie unnoticed and unexplained ? Are events of 
any value upon the pages of history, if the agents and 
causes by which they were accomplished are either un- 
mentioned or misrepresented ? 

Whilst, then, all the glory of the present happy condi- 
tion of the Presbyterian Church in America is ascribed to 
the great Head of the Church, it would be wrong to with- 
hold from the faithful and self-sacrificing men, who were 
instruments in working out these results, that grateful con- 
sideration to which their toils entitle them. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

College Labors — Lectures on the Prophecies — Discouragements in College 
Enterprise — Prof. Cunningham returns to Europe — Dr. Junkin elected 
President of Miami University — Accepts — Aids in obtaining a Successor 
at Lafayette — Departure from Easton — Enters upon Duty at Oxford — 
Peculiarities of the Position — Opposition — Inaugural Address and Cere- 
monies — Dr. Johns— Sectarian Jealousies and other Embarrassments— A 
Newspaper War — Progress. 

AFTER the termination of the agitations in the Pres- 
byterian Church, by the disruption of 1838, the 
labors of Dr. Junkin were chiefly bestowed upon the Col- 
lege, upon his editorial engagements, and upon some liter- 
ary undertakings, to be mentioned in their proper place. 
He abated not his toils in preaching Christ. Not only in 
the regular service kept up in the College Hall, but in the 
pulpit of Dr. Gray, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of 
Easton, in other pulpits in that city, in the pulpit of 
Greenwich, N. J. (his brother's), and in many others, he 
was a frequent and a welcome visitor. For a considerable 
period he supplied the first-mentioned church, during the 
illness of its pastor, and he was ever ready to lend assist- 
ance to his brethren, and all these services were gratuitously 
rendered. 

It was during the year 1839-40 that the course of lec- 
tures on the prophecies, afterwards published, were first 
delivered from the pulpit. The Rev. Dr. B. C. Wolff, of 
the German Reformed Church of Easton, being engaged 
in an effort to endow a literary institution connected with 
his own church, was much absent from home, and he in- 
vited Dr. Junkin to occupy his pulpit statedly during his 
(404 ) 



LECTURES ON THE PROPHECIES. 



405 



absence. The lectures on the prophecies were delivered on 
the afternoons of Sabbaths in that church, the students of 
the College attending with the congregation. The large 
edifice was usually crowded ; and the discourses produced 
a profound sensation. They were subsequently delivered 
at Miami University, and published, by request, in an 
octavo volume. The request for their publication came 
from the people, who had first heard them at Easton, and 
who desired to see them placed in a more enduring form. 
Books upon the prophecies, with scarce an exception, 
rarely go to a second edition. The very nature of the 
subjects treated in them unfits them for the mass of readers, 
and confines their circulation to the ranks of the learned 
and the curious. The edition of "Junkin on the Prophe- 
cies" was large, but was soon exhausted, and it is now out 
of print. But if those who possess the book will take the 
pains to examine its interpretations of the prophecies of 
Daniel and of John, they will be surprised at the accuracy 
with which events that have since transpired — some of 
them since the author's death — were indicated. With 
great modesty, yet with much confidence, he had fixed the 
dates of the downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy, 
and of the powers that upheld it, as he supposed them to 
be foretold ; and events have literally vindicated his 
correctness. 

Passages of the truest and most thrilling eloquence are 
found in these lectures ; and, as a gentleman of high liter- 
ary culture once remarked to the present writer, "There is 
no book known to me that contains, in such small compass, 
so perspicuous a diorama of universal history." It is also 
rich in thought, and a mine of suggestive ideas. 

The College, notwithstanding its lack of endowment, 
increased in the number of its students, in its general effi- 
ciency, and in reputation. The Normal School for a time 
was successful, but did not ultimately realize the expecta- 



4 o6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

tions of its founders. This was attributable chiefly to three 
causes: — First, the locality; being upon a lofty eminence 
overlooking the city of Easton, and difficult of access for 
such scholars as usually make up a common school. Second, 
the want of an endowment, by which gratuitous tuition 
could be offered to candidates for the office of teacher, 
such persons usually belonging to the impecunious classes. 
And third, the popular mind had not yet been educated up 
to that point which would encourage candidates for the 
profession of teacher to duly prepare themselves for it. 
Well-qualified teachers were not so much in demand as 
cheap teachers ; and it is a law of production that supply 
will not go in advance of demand. The truth was, that 
Dr. Junkin and Prof. Cunningham were many years in 
advance of their times; and they did not possess the pecu- 
niary ability to sustain the institution until public sentiment 
might overtake them. The Normal School edifice was 
completed in the summer of 1838, and the institution 
inaugurated as soon as it was ready. The publication of 
" T/ie Educator''' had been commenced shortly before. 
Both were continued until the summer of 1840, when Prof. 
Cunningham, becoming discouraged by the backward state 
of public sentiment in America upon the subject of edu- 
cation, resigned his position, and returned to Scotland. 
Dr. Junkin continued the effort to establish a Normal Insti- 
tute in connection with the College until the time of his 
translation to the Presidency of Miami University. The 
period of that translation was now approaching. 

The Miami University, at Oxford, Butler County, Ohio, 
had been established about 1823, in pursuance of a gift by 
the United States to the State of Ohio of a township of 
land in the fertile valley of the Miami, for the purpose of 
founding a literary institution. The venerable Dr. Robert 
H. Bishop, a native of Scotland, and a man of mature erudi- 
tion, was inaugurated its first President, July 9, 1824. But, 



ELECTED PRESIDENT OF MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 



407 



by reason of age and infirmity, he had resigned the situa- 
tion in 1840 ; and the Board of Trustees had elected Dr. 
Junkin to the office in the winter of 1841. This tender 
was wholly unsought by him, and the question of accept- 
ing it occasioned him great perplexity. His heart was in 
Lafayette. There his toils, and tears, and prayers, and 
sacrifices had consecrated in his affections the entire insti- 
tution, and even the locality itself. His fondest hopes 
were centred in its success. The very idea of abandoning 
it was painful in the extreme. For eight years he had 
struggled, amid appalling discouragements, to secure its 
establishment. A part of his private fortune was locked 
up in its edifices and appliances ; and the institution had 
now attained such a position as to command public respect 
and confidence. 

But the invitation from Miami University came to him 
at a time when, in addition to the difficulties of building 
up a college without adequate endowment, and without 
effective co-operation, embarrassments from an unexpected 
quarter had arisen. It would not be profitable to go into 
the details of a college difficulty, in which the general 
reader would feel little interest, and nothing more will be 
narrated than what is necessary to account for the fact, that 
a man of Dr. Junkin' s energy and persistence should leave 
a field of labor to which he was so fondly devoted, in 
which he had been so successful, and which seemed to 
promise so hopefully for the future. 

The gentlemen composing the Board of Trustees of the 
College were resident in different places, some at a distance 
from Easton, in Philadelphia, and other places. But in 
that town there were so many of the trustees resident as to 
constitute usually a majority of all in attendance at any 
one time. Of these, none had ever enjoyed the advantages 
of a college education, and few of them had any practical 
knowledge of the working of such an institution. Indeed, 



4 o8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

there were but a few of them that took any decided in- 
terest in the College. These were energetic friends of the 
institution, so far as personal influence was concerned, 
although none had made any large pecuniary advances. In 
a body of men such as composed this Board, it could not 
be expected that proper ideas of college discipline would 
prevail ; and it so happened, that a student, a near relative 
of two or three members of the Board who had previously 
been very active and efficient friends of the College, became 
a subject of discipline by the Faculty. He had gotten into a 
personal encounter with another student in the refectory, 
and had used a knife, slightly wounding his antagonist. 
The matter was investigated by the Faculty, and the of- 
fender was temporarily suspended from College privileges, 
until he should make suitable expressions of regret for his 
conduct. This, it was understood, he was inclined to do, 
under the advice of an older brother, also a student, and 
judicious and thoughtful beyond his years. But parties 
outside of the College interposed, and the result was, that 
the influential relatives of the censured student, instead of 
advising him to submit to the mild sentence of the College 
authorities, counselled a contrary course, and a serious 
spirit of opposition to the Faculty was awakened in these 
prominent members of the Board. 

This feeling of resentment was carried so far, by the 
friends of the recusant student, that pupils on their way 
to Lafayette were dissuaded from coming, by their influ- 
ence, and persuaded to go elsewhere. By the same influ- 
ence, such a construction was put upon a law of the State, 
by which an annual sum had been appropriated to the use 
of the College, that this appropriation was withheld from 
the current expenses of the Institution, to which it had pre- 
viously been given. These, and other efforts of a hostile 
character, added to the previous pecuniary difficulties with 
which he had been struggling, so discouraged the President, 



OBTAINING A SUCCESSOR AT LAFAYETTE. 



409 



that he came reluctantly to the conclusion, that it was his 
duty to resign to other hands the enterprise which he had 
sustained through so many years of toil and trial. It is 
due to the President to say, in this connection, that whilst 
in the Faculty he advised the mildest sentence, at all con- 
sistent with discipline, yet, when the decision of the Faculty 
was made, he sustained and carried it out with his accus- 
tomed quiet firmness. 

But although he had made up his mind to tear himself 
away from his "lovely Lafayette," his interest in her 
flagged not for a moment. It was his wish that, if possible 
before he left, a successor should be obtained. Several 
names were suggested to the Board of Trustees, and, among 
others, those of the Rev. Dr. James W. Alexander, at that 
time connected with the College of New Jersey, and the Rev. 
John W. Yeomans, then of Trenton, N. J. It was agreed 
that Dr. Junkin should repair first to Princeton, to see 
Dr. Alexander, and, if he was found not available, then 
to Trenton, to confer with Mr. Yeomans. This he did; 
and the writer well remembers, that upon a bleak and 
stormy winter day, his indefatigable brother stopped at 
the Manse of Greenwich, on his way to Princeton, in his 
own private conveyance, over impracticable roads, upon 
this disinterested mission for the College. 

Dr. Alexander peremptorily declined, from considera- 
tions of health and other reasons, to entertain the proposal 
to become head of the College ; and from Princeton Dr. 
Junkin repaired to Trenton, where he labored to show to 
Mr. Yeomans that Lafayette College offered a fine field of 
usefulness for a gentleman of culture and energy. His 
mission to Trenton was more successful ; for although Mr. 
Yeomans gave no pledge of acceptance, he consented to 
take the matter into consideration. 

The result was, that Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Yeomans was 
chosen President of the College, made a visit of inquiry 
35 v 



4 i o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN Km. 

and observation to Easton, and ultimately became Presi- 
dent ; so that there was no embarrassing hiatus between 
the departure of Dr. Junkin and the arrival of his successor. 

Meanwhile, and indeed previous to his going to Prince- 
ton and Trenton, Dr. Junkin had visited Miami Univer- 
sity, with a view to decide the question of accepting its 
Presidency, and the visit resulted in an affirmative deci- 
sion. 

It was the 30th of March, 1841, when, with his family, 
he departed from Easton for his future field of labor in the 
Valley of Miami. At that time there was no railroad con- 
nection between Easton and Philadelphia, and a recent 
storm and high waters had made the ordinary connection, 
by stage-coaches, impracticable. Both the Delaware and 
the Lehigh were swollen beyond their banks, and on a 
Monday morning a small fleet of " Durham boats" was 
about to depart for Philadelphia, one of which had been 
comfortably fitted up for the accommodation of Dr. Jun- 
kin's family, and perhaps a few others that availed them- 
selves of that novel mode of transportation. The boats 
were to depart at an early hour, in order to reach the city 
with daylight. His farewell discourse had been delivered 
the preceding Sabbath to tearful crowds ;* but, anxious to 



* We find, among Dr. Junkin's papers, in the handwriting of the late Rev. 
John Gray, D.D., the following Ode, written by the gifted wife of the latter, 
Mrs. Gray, and sung by the choir of the Presbyterian Church, Easton, at 
the close of Dr. Junkin's farewell sermon. The latter knew nothing of it 
until they began to sing : 



PARTING HYMN. 

Brother, go, the Master calls thee 

Other duties to fulfil ; 
Well we know, whate'er befalls thee, 

'Tis thy joy to do His will. 



DEPARTURE FROM E ASTON. 



411 



take a last look of the man and the family that had won such 
a deep place in their affections, a large concourse of the citi- 
zens, male and female, old and young, thronged the north 
bank of the Lehigh,* where the boat lay, to greet with a sor- 
rowful farewell the man whose departure from their midst 
was felt to be a public loss. The morning had been cloudy 
and threatened rain ; but that did not deter the people from 
thronging to the shore. After a few words of farewell, 
addressed by a gentleman present to Dr. Junkin and his 



Hark ! He calls thee ; 
Go, obey thy Master's will ! 

2. Shall we from this sacred altar, 

Hear no more thy warning voice. 
Making sternest sinners falter, 
Bidding feeblest saints rejoice? 

Shall we never 
Hear again thy warning voice ? 

3. O ! may all that thou hast taught us, 

Sink each melting heart within ; 

How the gracious Saviour sought us, 

Rescued us from death and sin ! 

May thy lessons 
Sink each melting heart within ! 

4. Go ! may Jesus guide thy going, 

May He be where'er thou art ; 
May His love, forever flowing, 

Cheer, refresh, and warm thy heart ! 

May His presence 
Never from thy soul depart ! 

5. And where no farewell is spoken, 

Where no tear the cheek shall stain. 
Where we give no parting token, 
There shall Christians meet again ! 

Yes, in heaven, 
Saviour, let us meet again ! 

* The Delaware was so swollen that the high dam of the Lehigh was 
submerged. 



4 i2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

family after they were seated in the boat, the Doctor re- 
sponded in a short speech marked by much feeling, and bade 
farewell. The boat pushed off, and was soon carried by the 
rapid current out of sight, whilst the silent and, in not a 
few cases, the sobbing crowd, waved adieu. Just then the 
sun broke brightly through the clouds, and a pleasant day 
was vouchsafed to the voyagers. This demonstration of 
the popular feeling was entirely impromptu. There was no 
pre-arrangement, no concert. Everybody seemed surprised 
to see everybody there ; and none were more taken by 
surprise than the travellers themselves. It was a spon- 
taneous throb of the popular heart ; and, as the people 
withdrew to their homes in silent sadness, all seemed 
to feel that they had lost a friend. 

Dr. Junkin entered upon his duties as President of Miami 
University on the 12th of April, 1 841,. and the nth of 
August following was appointed for his formal inauguration. 
Upon his suggestion, Prof. James C. Moffat, who had oc- 
cupied the Chair of Languages in Lafayette College, was 
elected to the Professorship of Latin in the University ; to 
which was soon after added the Professorship of History. 
Mr. Moffat accompanied Dr. Junkin to Oxford, where he 
remained some ten years. He was then called first to 
Princeton College, and afterwards (1861) elected to a 
chair in the Theological Seminary at that place. He is 
one of the ripest scholars of our country. 

The University is a State institution ; that is, it is under 
the control of the Legislature of the State of Ohio, so far 
as that the Legislature appoints the trustees who manage 
it. When the University was at first organized, a Pres- 
byterian clergyman was appointed president, and most 
of the professors were of the same denomination. Indeed, 
at that time, no other religious society in the West 
could supply men of the requisite scholarship in sufficient 
numbers to man the colleges, and the Presbyterians were 



OPPOSITION. 



413 



the people who exerted the broadest influence in the West, 
especially in the matter of education. In this remark it is 
designed to include all the several bodies that adopted the 
Presbyterian Form of Government. 

But, about the time Dr. Bishop resigned, and Dr. Jun- 
kin was chosen President, other denominations of Chris- 
tians had risen to importance in the Commonwealth of 
Ohio, both in point of numbers, and social and political 
influence ; and some degree of jealousy had begun to man- 
ifest itself among them, that the Presbyterians should con- 
trol the two State Universities, at Oxford and at Athens. 
Besides this, the Presbyterians were now divided into Old 
and New School, and, whilst the former predominated in 
the region of which Miami University was the literary 
centre, the latter possessed very considerable influence. 

It was not to be expected, that the fact that the new Pres- 
ident of the University had been prominent in the recent 
ecclesiastical conflict would be forgotten, nor that his ap- 
pointment should meet their cordial approval. Nor was it 
to be supposed, that the sects which stand arrayed against 
the Calvinistic creed would relish the advent of a Calvinist 
so pronounced as Dr. Junkin was known to be. Whilst, 
therefore, he was welcomed by most of the Old School 
Presbyterians, by the Associate Reformed, the Associate 
and the Reformed Presbyterians, by the Episcopalians, and 
by considerate and unimpassioned men of all parties who 
desired to see the University well conducted, irrespective 
of sectarian prejudices, there were some who accepted the 
new regime with less cordiality. 

The former President remained a member of the faculty, 
being appointed to a chair that did not require much toil ; 
and probably some of his friends and former pupils would 
have preferred to have had him retained at the head of the 
institution ; and, no doubt, the presence of his venerable 
predecessor in the faculty, demanded of the new head of the 
o5 



4 i4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

institution peculiar watchfulness, in order to treat him with 
due consideration. In this, it is conceded, he was suc- 
cessful ; and yet there was sometimes evidence that, in 
regard to this matter, he was narrowly watched. 

Dr. Junkin was distinctly given to understand by the 
Committee which informed him of his election, that one 
consideration, among others, which led the Board to select 
him as President, was their desire to have a firmer and 
more healthful discipline inaugurated in the College than 
had for some time been maintained ; that his reputation as 
a skilful and firm disciplinarian had no little weight in 
determining their choice, and he would be expected to 
restore discipline at all hazards. 

All persons familiar with college government, and es- 
pecially as administered over American youth, will readily 
understand what a delicate and difficult task was imposed 
upon the new President by this requirement. A stranger, 
coming from a remote part of the land, the successor of a 
kindly and lenient officer, whose very leniency made him 
beloved by youth, and entering upon his duties in the face 
of no small amount of prejudice, from causes already indi- 
cated, the work before Dr. Junkin was peculiarly difficult, 
and required unusual caution, tact, wisdom, and firmness. 
But he met these difficulties with a calmness, a courage, and 
a disposition that were equal to the exigency. The struggle 
was ardent on the part of the opponents of order, — almost 
fierce ; but order ultimately triumphed. Several students 
were expelled within the first months of his administration, 
others were more quietly sent home, and order, discipline, 
and study were restored. This result could not, of course, 
be reached without displeasing, not only the families and 
friends of the subjects of discipline, but also their sym- 
pathizers in the College. No heart felt keener sorrow at 
the necessity that was laid upon the faculty than that of 
the President. Nor was he insensible to the animadver- 



A WICKED AND CRUEL CANARD. 



415 



sions made upon the conduct of the college government; 
but he endured it all with quiet patience, and quailed not 
for one moment before the storm of opposition. 

An incident that gave Dr. Junkin's friends, and kindred 
at a distance, great distress for a while, will illustrate the 
spirit that animated some of the unruly elements over 
which he presided. One morning, during the first year of 
his presidency, there appeared in the United States Gazette, 
a leading daily paper of Philadelphia, a letter, dated Ox- 
ford, Ohio, and addressed to the Hon. Joseph R. Chandler, 
editor of the Gazette, stating that the writer was sorry to 
inform him that the Rev. Dr. Junkin, President of Miami 
University, had died, after a short illness, that day, at 
his residence in Oxford, and expressing regret at the loss 
the public had sustained. The letter was duly signed, and 
seemed to bear evidence of genuineness. On account of 
the fact that Mr. Chandler was known to be very cautious 
in publishing information from unknown correspondents, 
no one suspected that it was a wicked and cruel canard, 
perpetrated, probably, by some mischievous and heartless 
student. 

At that day there were no telegraphs, and no rapid rail- 
road mails ; and before the truth could be known, Dr. 
Junkin's kindred and friends had mourned him as dead 
for a week, — some of them longer. The newspapers spread 
the tidings, accompanied, in many cases, by eulogies of the 
supposed departed. Prayers were offered in the churches 
for the bereaved family ; and in two cases, at least, funeral 
sermons were prepared by eminent clergymen, who had 
been his life-long and intimate friends. But before any 
sermon was delivered, it is believed, the truth of the story 
was doubted, and in due time its falsehood was ascertained. 

It was a most cruel and distressing infliction of sorrow 
upon the friends of Dr. Junkin ; and yet it accomplished 
an object which the writer of the letter did not contem- 



4 i 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

plate. It called forth so general and hearty an expression 
of love and veneration for his memory as few men have 
lived to read of themselves. It evoked a premature record 
of his posthumous fame, which was of such a character as 
did the living man and his friends no injury. 

The Rev. Dr. T. L. Cuyler informed the writer that a 
short time after the reported death of Dr. Junkin, he 
(Mr. Cuyler), whilst travelling in Europe, met a gentle- 
man in a boat on one of the beautiful little lakes of the 
North of England. A mutual introduction having dis- 
closed the fact that Mr. Cuyler was from America, his 
fellow-voyager became sad, and remarked, "Meeting a 
gentleman from America recalls the very sad tidings that 
have just reached me through the public journals." "May 
I ask to what you allude?" "It is the death of a very 
dear and highly-esteemed friend, with whom I was in- 
timately associated whilst I resided in the United States, 
— the Rev. Dr. Junkin." "I am happy to assure you," 
said Mr. Cuyler, "that your friend still lives, and was 
well when I left America. The report of his death was a 
foolish and wicked canard." Mr. Cuyler added that he 
had rarely witnessed so rapid a transition from sorrow to 
joy as this stranger exhibited ; the whole scene proving 
the deep affection and regard which he entertained for 
Dr. Junkin, whom he had mourned as dead. The stranger 
was Professor Wm, Cunningham. 

On the day appointed for his inauguration (August n), 
the ceremonies pertaining thereto were performed in the 
presence of a vast concourse of people. Prayer was offered 
by the Rev. J. C. Barnes; an address was delivered by 
the Rev. Dr. H. V. D. Johns, of Cincinnati, of the Pro- 
testant Episcopal Church ; the keys of the University 
were delivered, the charge given, and the oath of office 
administered by Col. John Johnston. The President 
then pronounced his inaugural address, the theme of 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS AND CEREMONIES. 



417 



which was, "The origin, unity, and power of moral 

LAW. ' ' 

Dr. Johns' address was an able one, upon the subject 
of "Obedience to duly constituted authority a primary 
obligation of American citizenship." He urged in eloquent 
diction the duty and necessity of such obedience, pointed 
out the dangers which threatened our free institutions from 
the rapid increase of lawlessness ; traced that increase to 
its sources, in the laxity of family, school, and college 
government, and earnestly called upon all friends of liberty 
and law to rally to the effort of arresting the evil by 
staunching its source. 

Dr. Junkin's address was a vigorous and unique evolution 
of his subject, and an application of its principles to the 
interests of government among men, of college govern- 
ment, and of regulated liberty. All moral law originates 
in the will of God, — that will, when known, becomes the 
rule of moral action, — it is one and uniform in its require- 
ments, not multifarious nor variant, and when obeyed as a 
rule of life, the energy of its operation transcends all other 
created power. 

It would be impracticable to transfer to these pages any 
considerable part of this, or of any others of his very 
numerous public addresses. If we should attempt selec- 
tions, we would scarcely have completed the transcription 
before we would feel that we ought to have chosen others. 
To give the reader some idea of the sprighthness which his 
genius imparted even to dry subjects, we take, almost at 
random, a short extract or two from this inaugural address. 
After demonstrating that God is the origin of moral law, 
and his will, made known, the rule, he proceeds to show 
that the unity of moral law consists, not in the fact that 
it is alike clearly made known to all men, but in the fact 
that actual compliance with the will of God secures hap- 
piness ; failure to comply, imposes misery: 



4 i 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

"Upright action — action according to the will of God, 
and because it is the will of God — is uniformly connected 
with enjoyment and life ; and the contrary leads to death 
and woe. This is the essential nature of moral law. It 
holds out rewards and punishments, and without these, it 
would not be law at all ; it would be mere advice. Here 
is the fundamental principle of all morality. Here is the 
original conception, without which no man has any definite 
notion of duty or of sin, of law or of government. Here 
is the central point of the moral universe, where stands 
Jehovah's throne, and whence radiate all the forces which 
sustain and regulate the movements of created intelli- 
gences. 

"Such is the grand principle of unity in morals. It is 
of little concern what external things constitute the test of 
obedience to man or angel, — whether it be one or one 
thousand acts, — whether the moral agent have laid upon 
him one or one thousand requisitions, — whether a man's 
knowledge of his Maker's will be limited to a few things 
or extended to many things, — whether the moral agent 
be a man or an angel, — whether Lazarus or Gabriel, — the 
question submitted is, whether he will comply with that 
will of God which is made known to him. The extent of 
his knowledge may and must affect the degree of his reward 
or his punishment, as the case may be ; but the character 
of his account and final destiny is determined simply by 
his obedience to the will of God or his refusal to obey. 
This one principle pervades all intelligent creatures of which 
we have any knowledge. In the regions of celestial light, 
obedience to the will of God secures, increases, and per- 
petuates the felicities of the blessed. In the world of woe, 
disobedience to the will of God aggravates, increases, and 
perpetuates the wretchedness of the lost. . . . Here is the 
one all-pervading principle of moral law, the grandeur 
of whose simplicity thrills the bosoms of angelic hosts, 
while it prostrates in profound reverence the consciences 
of men on earth, and flashes upon the realms of darkness 
and of death that terrific thunderbolt of Heaven's venge- 
ance, — 'Ye knew the will of God, but did it not !' " 

After discoursing of the power of moral law, he thus 
asserts the amplitude of its range : 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



419 



"This I have said is co-extensive with the moral universe. 
There is not a rational intelligence in heaven, earth, or 
hell beyond its reach. ... It covers our world. It places 
the autocrat and the beggar alike under its commanding 
requisitions. ... It repudiates the idea that there is one 
code of morals for the rich and another for the poor ; one 
for the private citizen and another for the public function- 
ary ; one for the farmer, another for the artisan, another 
for the merchant, and still another for the professional 
man. On the contrary, this mighty principle of morality 
— the will of God must be obeyed — ascends the throne 
and the presidential chair ; it pervades the halls of legisla- 
tion, and demands that laws and their executors be in sub- 
ordination to the will of God. The husband and the wife, 
the parent and the child, the master and the servant, the 
living, the dying, and the dead, all are equally amenable 
to the will of God. It descends with the miner to the 
bowels of the mountains ; it ascends with the aeronaut 
above the clouds ; its power is felt in the peaceful cottage, 
by the tempest-tossed mariner at the mast-head ; it rules in 
the civic procession, and the storm of battle is subject to 
its control. The Greenlander, in his snow-built hut, bows 
to the will of God ; the European, in his marble mansion, 
bows to the will of God ; the African, on his parched 
sands, bows to the will of God. Lo ! the amplitude of its 
range ! — it girdles the globe, and binds it to the footstool 
of its Maker's throne !" 

Another brief extract is added, not only because it con- 
tains a strong statement of a great truth, but because it 
discloses what those who knew its author believed to be 
the very soul of his own actions, and the power that sus- 
tained him through a life of trial and of toil : 

"Let us advert for a moment to the energy of its opera- 
tion. This is seen first in the easy resolution of doubtful 
questions in morality. We have only to inquire what is 
the will of God in this ? That settled, the path of duty is 
plain, and then 

" We have the spirit of unbending integrity. He, in 
whose soul this principle is settled, knows nothing but the 



4 20 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

will of God, and this can never lead him astray into the 
wayward paths of folly and of crime ; and thus 

"We have the spirit of true heroism. The energy of 
this divine rule lifts him above the fear of all created 
things. The fear of God is the all-absorbing affection of 
his soul, and he knows no other fear. Obstacles apparently 
insurmountable may stand before him, and obstruct his path 
of duty, but onward he presses in the face of them all. 
Tell him 'there's a lion in the way, you'll be devoured;' 
be there a hundred lions in the way, that is the way which 
by the will of God I am bound to go. He'll take care of 
the lions. ' But if you hold on to these principles of yours 
you will suffer loss of goods, and be reproached, and 
scourged, and burned.' Let them confiscate my goods, 
and reproach, and scourge, and burn me, if God give them 
power ; I am not accountable for these consequences ; I 
am responsible only for this, — that I obey the will of 
God." 

Into the performance of the duties of his office in the 
University, Dr. Junkin threw all the energies of his earnest 
nature. Few men of his generation, more thoroughly met 
the requirement of the Scripture maxim, "Whatsoever thy 
hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." He had a 
difficult and delicate task to perform, and one that called 
for a peculiar phase of self-denial. But he shrunk not 
from doing it faithfully. 

It would have been much more pleasant to flesh and 
blood, and much more in accord with the aspirations of a 
natural ambition, to have adapted the administration of the 
Institution, and the standard of its scholarship, to the pop- 
ular but unhealthy public sentiment that prevailed at that 
time in the West, and thus to have attracted great numbers 
to the college classes. A lax, accommodating discipline, 
and a low standard of scholarship, would have done this ; 
for neither rigid rules nor hard study are apt to be popular 
with American youth. A short cut through college, and 
early entrance upon active life, were demanded by the utili- 
tarian sentimentof the times, and parental stinginess too 



A NEWSPAPER WAR. 



421 



often backed the claim. To weed out the disorderly and 
the indolent students, and thus to reduce instead of increase 
the College rolls, was not a pleasant process ; but it was the 
one prescribed by the Board of Trustees, and it was in ac- 
cord with the President's habits and high sense of right. 
Even when the whole pecuniary responsibility of a College 
had rested upon him, and he was dependent upon tuition 
fees for paying the salaries of professors, he maintained 
the discipline and the high standard of scholarship ; and, 
as he had accepted of the Presidency of the University 
when he knew that a similar administration would be ex- 
pected of him, he was not the man to sacrifice the prospect- 
ive and permanent interests of the Institution to a desire 
for temporary popularity, and the retention or attraction 
of numbers. The consequence was that the number of 
students decreased for a time. This fact was made the 
basis of newspaper attacks, in which the President himself 
was assailed, and the control of the denomination to which 
he belonged over the instructions of the Institution was 
complained of. This newspaper war about the University 
was quite voluminous, and sometimes personal and acri- 
monious. Most of the papers containing it, papers published 
in Cincinnati, Dayton, Rossville, Xenia, Maysville, Ky., 
and other places, are in possession of the writer ; but, as 
it was one of those local and many-sided controversies in 
which the writers sometimes exhibited a temper and used a 
style that the same men would probably deplore when the 
heat of the conflict was over, and as the storm appeared 
to spend itself by its own violence, it does not seem to be 
demanded by any great interest, past or present, that the 
details of it should here be given. It has been alluded to 
only as an incident of a trying character in the life of Dr. 
Junkin, and in the further mention of it no reflections shall 
be made upon the actors in those scenes, most of whom 
have gone from the conflicts of earth. 
36 



422 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

To record the fact that Dr. Junkin was President of 
Miami University for a number of years, and to make no 
mention of the commotion excited by his election and ad- 
ministration, would be to ignore very important links in 
the chain of his history. Whilst to enter into the details 
of a newspaper controversy, of which he and the Institu- 
tion over which he presided were the subjects, would be 
to revive issues that are past or dead, and open wounds 
which time's soft hand has closed, and would demand a 
record which might grieve the living and needlessly reflect 
upon some who are dead. 

Suffice it to say that the new President had scarcely been 
inaugurated when his qualifications for the place began to 
be assailed, and a general onslaught was made upon the 
Board for calling him, and upon his person and admin- 
istration. The charge of unfitness for the place was not 
based upon any defect either of talents, scholarship, moral 
integrity, aptness to teach, or other attributes usually re- 
quired in the principal of a college. Indeed, the objections 
urged would not prove him unfit to be at the head of a 
University, but only of that University in particular. It 
was a State institution. Every citizen had an equal right 
in it. No one Christian sect ought to have a dominant 
control over its instructions. It ought to be kept entirely 
free from sectarianism ; and, as Dr. Junkin was so pro- 
nounced a Calvinist, it was supposed that he was unfit for 
the place, because it would be impossible for such a man 
to abstain from inculcating his own peculiar views. Some 
of the professors, too, had been appointed, it was alleged, 
by his recommendation, and it was presumed that they were 
men of like cast with himself. In addition to all, he was 
a rigid disciplinarian, a man of reserved and abstracted 
manner, and personally objectionable to one branch of his 
own denomination (the New School), who, although not 
numerous in that part of Ohio, were a considerable body 



THE "WESTERN CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE: 



423 



in the State. The Church of God (Campbellites) disliked 
his opinions ; the Universalists thought him too sectarian 
and pronounced upon the subject of future punishment ; 
and whilst the Methodists were very moderate in their 
animadversions, their organ was still of opinion that stu- 
dents of their church could hardly have fair play under 
a professor of mental and moral science, who, in his 
theological writings, was so strongly against the Arminian 
system. 

This last-named denomination had grown strong in the 
West, and had begun to bestow more attention upon edu- 
cation than in the earlier periods of their history. About 
the time of Dr. Junkin's advent to Miami, they had taken 
order upon the subject in their Conference, and had 
adopted a very able report. This report alluded to the 
fact, that the State Universities of the West were too much 
under Presbyterian control, but took no very decided 
ground. In the controversy which we are now describing, 
the Western Christian Advocate, the Cincinnati organ of 
that church, very moderately and in good temper, but still 
decidedly, bore a part. It pointed to the fact, that both 
the Ohio Universities, and the State College of Indiana, at 
Bloomington, were under Presbyterian control, and com- 
plained of this as an inequality. In their paper published 
on the 20th of January, 1843, m reply to an article from 
the pen of Dr. Macdill, of the Associate Reformed Church, 
the editors say : 

"When we spoke of the control, which Methodists 
claimed in the Ohio Universities, we neither said, meant, 
nor hinted at any other or different control than such as 
is now used by the Presbyterians. ... As far as we 
have yet seen, we have no counter-information to rebut 
the charge that the President of Miami University inter- 
feres with the religious creed and privileges of Methodist 
students ; if, however, we have been misinformed, we will 
gladly correct the mistake, whenever we have adequate 



424 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

rebutting testimony. We still say that Miami University is 
no place for Methodist students who desire to enjoy their 
religious privileges.* . . . We still advise them, if only 
for the sake of peace, to go elsewhere." 

In another part of the same article they say, in regard 
to Indiana University : 

" Mr. Wylie refused to have a Methodist professor in 
Indiana State College. . . . It is just like some of the 
former acts of the Trustees of Miami University. To re- 
fuse the appointment in consequence of the name Wesleyan, 
argues much more narrow sectarianism than what appears 
on the part of those who desired that name. . . . We 
still affirm that the Methodists of Ohio will have something 
to do with the State Universities." 

There were some grounds for the claim of our Method- 
ist brethren to have a share in one or other of the Uni- 
versities of the State. No candid mind can blame them 
for the wish, nor for the efforts which they made, with ul- 
timate success, to obtain control ; but they were certainly 
unjust to Dr. Junkin, in charging him with interfering, in 
his official capacity, with the rights of Methodist students. 
No doubt, in his many ministrations of the gospel in 
the churches of Oxford, Cincinnati, and other places 
where he preached, he would occasionally state his dis- 
tinctive views of gospel truth ; but he never obtruded 
these views upon the students. 

But there were various dissatisfied parties, not of the 
Methodist denomination, who took advantage of these alle- 
gations, and raised a clamor. Of these, some had ecclesi- 
astical recollections of an unpleasant kind ; others were 
disobliged at the time the new President was elected ; others 



* After the publication of the above, a certificate was voluntarily given, 
signed, it is believed, by all of the Methodist students in the College, correct- 
ing this statement very explicitly. 



A STORMY ORDEAL. 



425 



did not approve of the change in the discipline; and others, 
still, differed in opinion with him upon questions of public 
polity which agitated the country at that time. Some 
assailed the institution and its head from one stand-point, 
and some from another. He had many strong and able 
defenders, too, who no doubt said sharp things, which 
provoked acrimonious retort ; and it can with truth be 
said, that rarely has a public man passed through such a 
fiery and stormy ordeal. He took no personal part in the 
controversy, until a formal accusation had been made 
before the Board of Trustees, when he published a state- 
ment over his own signature in his own defence. The 
Board of Trustees, in response to the formal accusation, 
which came from some of the Alumni, passed the fol- 
lowing : 

' ' Resolved, That after as careful an investigation of this 
subject as it is in their power at present to make, the Board 
are of opinion, that there is no evidence yet presented on 
which to ground any serious charge of incompetency or 
unfitness in the President of this institution to fill this 
office." 

It was after this that Dr. Junkin published the defence 
above alluded to, which was towards the close of his ad- 
ministration, and not long before his recall to Lafayette 
College. 

Previous to this date, however, other incidents in his 
history occurred, which no doubt imparted intensity to the 
spirit and the exertions of his opponents. These we 
go back to narrate ; but, before doing this, the writer will 
offer a remark or two in regard to the most unprecedented 
treatment which President Junkin received whilst in Ohio. 
It was a persecution conducted with intense vehemence, 
on the part of a few, whilst it was magnanimously resisted 
16* 



4 26 UFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

by many others, upon whom Dr. Junkin had no claims, 
except those which a just man, misunderstood and mis- 
represented, has upon the adherents of righteousness and 
fair dealing. 

Whilst it really was a persecution, so conducted as to 
mar the comfort and usefulness of its object, and to greatly 
wound the hearts of his family, it can be accounted for, 
and that truthfully, as the writer supposes, without assuming 
that all, or even many, of those who joined in it, directly 
or remotely, were actuated by a persecuting or a malignant 
spirit. No doubt a few were prompted by feelings of 
personal resentment, especially the subjects of discipline 
and their friends. But it is probable, that much of the 
opposition proceeded from motives such as were natural 
for the parties to feel, and which, in them, were not 
blameworthy. 

This may seem to be a strange admission to be made by 
one who had absolute confidence in the purity, the integ- 
rity, the piety, the learning, the intellectual power, the apt- 
ness to teach, and the governing ability of Dr. Junkin. 
Pre-eminent as he was in all these, he was not qualified, in 
the writer's judgment, to be the President of Miami Uni- 
versity, at the time he was called to that office. The reasons 
for this opinion are — 

(a.) It was a State college, under control of the civil 
government of Ohio, and, of course, all the Christian sects 
felt that they had equal rights to its privileges. This feel- 
ing had found public utterance before his accession, and 
continued to grow afterwards. 

(£.) In such a state of things, no man of pronounced 
opinions, synthetical habits of thought and speech, and 
incapable of disguising his sentiments, could have met the 
growing demand of the public for absolute neutrality in 
doctrinal opinion. No matter what he might be, Calvin- 



REASONS FOR DISQUALIFICATION. 427 

ist, Arminian, Pelagian, Socinian, or Infidel, the jealousy 
which was rife at the time would have suspected him of 
obtruding his views, and would have charged him with so 
doing. 

(c.) Dr. Junkin was wholly disqualified for a position 
which demanded temporizing ; and whilst it is believed that, 
in the class-room and in his preachings to the students, he 
was very careful to abstain from disputed points, yet in his 
ministrations and labors outside of the College, he did not 
disguise his convictions of truth ; and it was very natural 
for those who heard him, in pulpits near to or distant 
from the University, to suspect that he would carry his 
opinions into the College. 

(d.) Dr. Junkin brought with him to Ohio a reputation 
of being a very thorough Calvinist of the Old School. He 
had taken part in a great and recent ecclesiastical struggle. 
The bitterness of that conflict was hardly allayed. He 
was known, too, to be decidedly conservative upon other 
questions of exciting interest ; and it was very natural that 
all men of opposite opinions should be reluctant to have 
such a man in so important a position. Hence men, who 
greatly differed among themselves in many points, made 
common cause against him. Had he been a man of in- 
ferior intellectual power, less pronounced opinions, and 
more negative character and disposition, he doubtless would 
have been less obnoxious. 

(<?.) His long habit of trusting his good name in the 
hands of his Master, and his distaste for, and, indeed, lack 
of skill in, self-vindication, made him comparatively help- 
less in such a war as was waged upon his administration ; 
and for such a position as the presidency of a State college 
the man is disqualified who has no aptitude either to em- 
ploy the arts for gaining popularity, or for adroit defence 
when assailed. In these Dr. Junkin had no experience 



42 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

or skill. His character was too transparent, his temper 
too frank, his manner too abstracted, his disposition too 
unsuspicious, and his conduct too undisguised, to qualify 
him for a post in which everybody was to be pleased, and 
men of all opinions conciliated. He was not fit for the 
place, especially at that time, when prejudice was rife, and 
when the cauldron of conflicting opinions was already 
boiling. 

All this can be said without abating our high estimate of 
his character and abilities, and without assuming that all 
those who doubted his qualifications for the position acted 
insincerely or with malice. The difficulty lay in the 
times, and in the essential viciousness of a system of col- 
lege education controlled by civil authority, and in which 
the jealousy and the conflict of sects demand the emas- 
culation of education by the repression of all distinctive 
morality and religious truth. 

This singular conflict which we have described, did not 
interfere with the regular operations of the University. 
The Faculty was united, able, and industrious. Good 
order, as a general thing, was preserved among the stu- 
dents. The agitation had rather increased than diminished 
public confidence in the faculty and its chief. A distin- 
guished gentleman from Xenia, who had been in attendance 
at the Commencement in August, 1844, the last one at 
which Dr. Junkin presided, wrote for the Torchlight of that 
town an account of the College, from which the following 
extracts are made : 

"The Annual Commencement of this noble State insti- 
tution came off on Wednesday and Thursday, the 7th and 
8th inst. Having been present through all the exercises, 
permit me, Mr. Editor, to express the high gratification 
which I experienced. . . . The graduating class . . . 
acquitted themselves with much credit, both to themselves 
and their teachers. As I have no connection whatever 



COMMENCEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY. 



429 



with the University, nor any interest in it, except that 
which belongs to the whole community, I feel an entire 
freedom in expressing my opinions, unrestrained either by 
fear or favor. And my deliberate conviction is that the 
Institution, if suffered to prosecute its operations free from 
the restless and revolutionizing spirit of our day, will prove 
a rich blessing to our State and country. 

''The University has been industriously represented as 
having 'fallen from its high estate,' and as having all its 
energies utterly prostrated. It may be true that it does not 
flourish to the extent (in point of numbers) that all right- 
hearted men could wish. But it might be a curious prob- 
lem how much of this alleged prostration has been owing 
to these very representations, so industriously circulated 
through the whole community. Nothing is more fully 
attested by experience and observation than this, — that the 
best of men may be prostrated, and the energies of the best 
institutions paralyzed, by the untiring efforts of restless 
demagogues wielding the all-powerful weapon of the spirit 
of party. From personal observation, attentive, and, as far 
as I know myself, unbiassed, I am convinced that the pres- 
ent professors of the Miami University are men well ac- 
quainted with their business, and having the welfare of 
their pupils and of the Institution sincerely at heart. There 
is one thing especially worthy of notice, which should give 
this University a strong hold upon the affections of a Chris- 
tian people, viz., that, while nothing properly sectarian has 
a place, the philosophy of the Bible stands forth in bold 
relief. Through all the exercises of the late Commence- 
ment we were constantly reminded that this is a Christian 
institution, and that we are a Christian people, who claim 
an open Bible as our dearest treasure. 

'Fiat justitia, ruat caelum. ' ' ' 

But whilst this writer, and many who felt with him, were 
satisfied with the state of things in the College, and could 
thus speak of its President and Faculty, others took an 
opposite view of things, and, with a disregard of the 
amenities both of style and of matter, such as too often 
marks bitter political conflicts, they assailed the Faculty 
and those who wrote in their defence. 



4 3 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

The storm seemed to have spent its fury in the summer 
of 1844, and a reaction began; and it is likely that Dr. 
Junkin and his friends would have been sustained by the 
public, and been left to their work in peace; but other 
events were maturing which entirely changed his future 
life. These, with other matters not yet written, will 
occupy another chapter. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

Labors to elevate the Standard of Scholarship — Baccalaureates — Decision 
of Character — Pulpit Labors — Anti-Slavery Controversy — Speech in the 
Synod of Cincinnati — Introductory Letter — John McDonough — Dr. 
Junkin's Plan of Emancipation the same with that of President Lincoln 
— Opinions of Conservatives — Probabilities — Opinions of Reviewers — 
Assembly of 1844 — Dr. Junkin, Moderator — Questions before the Body 
— Quorum — Ordinations — Slavery — Free Church of Scotland Commis- 
sioners — Reception — Dr. Junkin's Speech — Action of the General 
Assembly. 

DURING Dr. Junkin's administration of Miami 
University, he not only was diligent in performing 
the duties pertaining to his offices as President and Professor, 
but he employed his pen in endeavoring to increase public 
interest in the subject of education, and especially to super- 
induce a higher standard of scholarship in American Col- 
leges. There had arisen a strong prejudice, in many 
quarters, against the ancient College curriculum, especially 
against the study of the ancient languages; and there 
seemed to be a growing demand for what was assumed to 
be a more utilitarian course of study. The popular concep- 
tion of a College education seemed to be to prepare young 
men for practical life, in the shortest time, and by the 
easiest and most direct course possible. Study, as a means 
of mental training and development, was not by such per- 
sons appreciated. The impartation of thoughts and in- 
formation — not teaching men to think for themselves — was 
the too popular notion of education. Against this mis- 
taken theory Dr. Junkin set himself, and did what he could 
to correct it. In his Baccalaureate address in 1843, ne 
embodied an argument against it, and aimed to explain to 

(430 



43 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

the popular mind "The Bearings of College Education 
upon the Welfare of the whole Community." This he did 
in so simple, illustrative, and convincing a manner that 
none who heard him, or who read the address, could fail 
to see that every interest of the community, every profes- 
sion, occupation, and business among the people, and 
all other departments of education were benefited by 
thorough College education. He unfolded its influence 
upon science, the arts, commerce, civilization, political 
economy, government, liberty, and religion ; and demon- 
strated that all depended upon the reign of enlightened 
mind ; and that they had prospered, and would prosper, 
in the direct ratio of the progress of that intellectual and 
moral culture which right College education only could 
secure. 

After a discussion of his theme, marked by lucid logic, 
telling facts, and ardent eloquence, he applied the princi- 
ples evolved to the institution over which he presided. 
He said : 

"What, then, is our policy? Raise the standard high ! 
higher ! STILL HIGHER ! If you want the noblest 
youths of our land to rally round your College, this is your 
true policy. Make them believe the truth — not that the 
top of your pyramid is lost in the clouds, but that it 
towers to heaven, and yet it may be reached. This is 
our duty. We owe it to our State and to our country. We 
owe it to our country's Great Benefactor. God and Wash- 
ington have committed to us these ten talents; and woe to 
us if we bury them in the earth, — if we invert the pyramid, 
and send the youth of the land downward, to seek its 
glorious summit in the grossness of a base materialistic 
utilitarianism ! 

"Let us turn an adder's ear to the siren song of a tem- 
porary expediency. Let us not listen to the winnings of 
sectarian jealousy Let us not cut down our moun- 
tain to the mole-hill dimensions which some may have 
prescribed to professional qualifications. Let us not go 
into the market with our roll of parchments, and enter 



BA CCALA UREA TES. 



433 



into an inglorious competition from the lowest bidder! 
We have defended our position. . . . 

"Such, gentlemen of the Board, is the understanding in 
this institution, — such the views of this Faculty. 

"Such, young gentlemen of the Senior Class, we well 
know to be your views and feelings. You now leave us, to 
carry them out, we fondly hope and trust, through long, 
laborious, respectable, and happy professional lives. . . . 

"And now, my dear young friends, time has brought us 
to the sundering-point. When, and where, and how we 
shall meet again is known only to Him who sees the end 
from the beginning. The changes of this world appear to 
us, who see so small a portion of the Creator's universal 
plan, utter confusion ; as do the movements of the planet- 
ary orbs to the illiterate ; but to Omniscience all is order, 
harmony, beauty. . . . 

"Look forward to the vast field before you. Look 
beyond to the rewards of faithful' devotion to the cause of 
truth. Look upward to the Star of Bethlehem, so often 
pointed out to you from these high places, and it will be a 
light to your feet. 

"Short, but most happy, has been the period of my in- 
tercourse with you. Should we all prove faithful to our- 
selves and our friends, to our country and our God, we 
shall shortly meet in that bright world, where language is 
all living, science all light, happiness unspeakable and eter- 
nal. Amen. So let it be !" 

It was Dr. Junkin's custom always to select a definite 
subject for his Baccalaureate addresses. His reason for this 
is stated in the exordium of his Baccalaureate of 1842: 

"That our annual high-day may not be characterized, in 
one of its exercises, by a mere series of stereotyped re- 
marks, it is my purpose always to select a subject. The 
relations which terminate, and those which begin, at Com- 
mencement, are almost perfectly the same on all occasions ; 
hence some of the matter proper to be uttered must neces- 
sarily be repetitions. There is no necessity, however, to 
limit a Baccalaureate address to these items of inevitable 
identity. The larger portion of it may, with great pro- 

37 



434 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIiV. 

priety, vary perpetually ; and thus abate the satiety which 
otherwise would result to those attending every year." 

That year he discussed the topic, "The Bearings of 
Christianity upon Republican Government." In 1844 his 
subject was "Decision of Character." In his introduction 
he said, after announcing his subject : 

"The honorable Board will perceive at once that novelty, 
and the hope of profiting by its charms, hud nothing to 
do with this selection. The subject is trite and hackneyed. 
Since the masterly essay of the late John Foster, none but 
the novice would select this topic in the hope of gaining 
admiration by originality." 

After an able and a far more unique and original dis- 
cussion of the subject than his modest introduction would 
lead us to expect, he summed up all in six practical rules 
for the formation of a character of decision, which rules 
he commended, in an eloquent and tender appeal, to the 
students of the University : 

"1. If accuracy of knowledge is so radically important 
toward forming correct judgments, thence results the 
maxim, ' Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing 
well. ' 

"2. Let knowledge be perfect. This regards the parts 
and the degree of every part. Let no man, who aims at 
independent thinking and true decision, sit down con- 
tented, in a vain flattering belief that he understands a 
given subject. 

" 3 . Choose your particular field of scientific investigation, 
— your profession ; and confine your main exertions to that 
field. No man possesses a universal genius, — the phrase 
embodies a contradiction. Genius is a particular adapta- 
tion, and cannot be universal. 

"4. Let deliberation be repressed, until investigation has 
completed her work. 

"5. Let the intensity of desire never outstrip the tardier 
movements of investigation, deliberation, and judgment. 

"6. Let desire always Wear the habiliments of virtue. 



PULPIT LABORS. 



435 



Never cherish for a moment a desire to accomplish a wrong 
thing. Success, in such a case, can only be temporary ; 

for right will ultimately triumph Under this rule 

you avoid the most fearful of all opposition to a decided 
purpose, — the stern rebuke of a condemning conscience. 
Even in the most resolute and hardened villains, their de- 
termined purpose is but feebly executed ; the nerve of 
resolution being shivered by the appalling voice of con- 
science. Whereas, with all the force of her approval, the 
desire of doing right becomes overpowering, and binds 
forever a free spirit to its cherished purpose. 

" ' What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? 
Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just ; 
And he but naked, though locked up in steel, 
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted !' 

"This is the man who stands erect amid the ruins of a 
crashing world." 

From Dr. Junkin's published addresses scores of such 
passages might be selected. But space forbids. So much 
is transferred merely as specimens of his modes of thought 
and utterance. The perorations of his baccalaureates were 
filled with tenderness, especially toward the young men 
who were about to take their departure. 

Whilst Dr. Junkin resided at Oxford, he was of course a 
member of the Presbytery of that name, and of the Synod 
of Cincinnati. As a Presbyter, he was always at his post, 
if not providentially hindered, and bore his part in the 
deliberations of the church courts. He never felt like a 
minister without charge, for he considered himself ex officio 
the pastor of the University, and not only lectured and 
preached in the College Hall, but performed pastoral duty 
in visiting the students. He also, for a time, preached 
part of the Sabbath at a church four or five miles from 
Oxford. 

It has already been stated, that shortly after going to 
Miami, he repeated, in the College Hall, to the students, 



436 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

and such of the citizens as attended, his lectures on the 
Prophecies, and he prepared them for publication at the 
request of many who heard them at Easton. 

We come now to narrate an episode in the life of Dr. 
Junkin which has been very much misapprehended and 
misrepresented, and which no doubt had an important in- 
fluence in intensifying a part of the opposition to him in 
the West. 

It is well known that about the time of his advent to 
Miami the Abolition excitement was at its height. For 
nearly ten years it had agitated the country, North and 
South, East and West. The anti-slavery men of the coun- 
try had become divided in their counsels, in such a way as 
to separate them into several classes. The Garrison school 
of abolitionists had advanced much further, in their ag- 
gressive doctrines and measures, than many others, equally 
hostile to slavery, were willing to go. There was another 
school equally opposed to it, but who were less violent in 
their language, more moderate in their counsels, and more 
considerate in their measures ; but both schools had adopted 
the principle that slavery was malum in se — a sin in itself; 
and of course, with such a premise assumed, the inference 
was unavoidable, that it ought instantly to cease and be 
abolished. The Garrison school had, as a general thing, 
broken away from the Holy Scriptures as a guide, because 
they seemed to tolerate slavery in certain circumstances. 

But there was a large class of anti-slavery men who were 
Christians, believers in the Bible, and who were unwilling, 
like the infidel abolitionists, to reject the Word of God 
because it seemed to give countenance to the evil which 
they detested. These, like the others, assumed that slavery 
wasfler se a sin, and like them held that, as a sin, it should 
immediately be given up. The necessary consequences of 
this assumption were the corollaries : — First. That no slave- 
holder ought to be a member of the church of Christ. 



ABOLITION DISCUSSION. 



437 



Second. That the church should not only testify against 
slavery, but exclude all slaveholders from her communion. 
And, although they rarely asserted it, another necessary 
corollary was, that the non-slaveholding part of the church 
ought to separate themselves from the slaveholding part. 

Against these doctrines, of course, almost the entire 
South was arrayed, and a large portion of the North 
also, and the agitation of the public mind upon the sub- 
ject had been increasing from year to year. It was no 
new cause of disturbance in church and state. At the very 
foundation of the national government this great acknowl- 
edged evil met our fathers, and embarrassed the framers of 
our Constitution. And all down through our history, the 
existence of slavery in one part of our land, after it had 
been abolished in others, had proved an ever-recurring 
source of difficulty in national legislation. Frequently it 
had threatened the dissolution of the Union, and called 
for repeated compromises. These only served to postpone, 
for a time, the threatening dangers, without removing 
them. 

The Presbyterian Church had also, at an early period of 
her history, recognized slavery as a moral and social evil, 
and borne decided testimony against it ; which testimony 
she reiterated from time to time, and never withdrew it. 

The anti-slavery sentiment, at one time, was an Ameri- 
can sentiment. It pervaded both North and South. 
Several States, that had been slaveholding States, had 
abolished it, by a gradual process, — as Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, and New York. Kentucky had taken up the 
subject of abolition, and discussed it in her legislature, 
with strong tendencies to emancipation, before Garrison's 
Liberator made its appearance. Similar movements had 
been made in Virginia. That great, good, and eloquent 
statesman and patriot, James McDowell, afterwards Gov- 
ernor of Virginia, as early as 1831-2, introduced resolu- 
37* 



438 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

tions looking to emancipation, into the Virginia Legisla- 
ture. 

But when aggressive, and especially when abusive, aboli- 
tion commenced its career, and interference with Southern 
slavery by Northern agency was threatened, the power of 
Southern emancipationists was soon paralyzed, and the very 
men who were opposed to the system, and had begun 
these movements, were forced not only to relinquish their 
efforts, but to stand in defence of what they deemed the 
safety of their section. It was the aggressive abolition 
movement that arrested these efforts, and consolidated the 
South in opposition to what they deemed unjustifiable 
interference with their domestic affairs. 

The overwhelming majority at the North was also op- 
posed to the abolition agitation. No political party of the 
larger national organizations had ever identified itself with 
aggressive abolition. The profound conviction of the 
great mass of Northern citizens was, that slavery ought to 
be left to the control and management of the States within 
which it existed. There our fathers had left it when they 
framed the Constitution, and for a long time no consider- 
able body of men had proposed to interfere with it. 

Love for the Union had always been a dominant senti- 
ment — almost a passion — in the American bosom. Any- 
thing that endangered the Union was repelled with impa- 
tience ; and, as the aggressive abolitionists had sometimes 
uttered sentiments which were considered hostile to the 
Union, strong indignation was felt and often expressed 
against them on that account; and this indignation occa- 
sionally took such possession of masses of the people as to 
lead to unjustifiable means of opposition, and to mob vio- 
lence. The burning of Pennsylvania Hall, and other demon- 
strations of the kind, were as foolish as they were wicked; 
for persecution always gives ultimate strength to the perse- 
cuted principles and the party which upholds them. 



SLAVERY CONTROVERSY. 



439 



In the church courts, too, the wisest policy was not 
always pursued. The right of petition and memorial was 
sometimes infringed, or, at least, the petitions upon the 
subject of slavery were not treated with the same respect 
that those upon other subjects received. Discussion in 
the church courts was discouraged, sometimes prevented by 
the motion to lay on the table ; and a most decided reluc- 
tance was for a long time shown to tolerate the agitation of 
this exciting topic. 

The writer of these pages was always of opinion, that 
this was a mistaken policy on the part of conservative men. 
Discussion is a safety-valve through which it is often wise 
to "let off" the steam-like enthusiasm of extravagant re- 
formers. If such enthusiasm is repressed, especially when 
it is the offspring of conscientious convictions, it is sure to 
find vent somewhere and somehow, either by a secret escape- 
pipe, or by the crashing explosion. 

In the National Legislature a similar policy was adopted, 
with similar results, viz., the intensifying of the repudiated 
abolition sentiment, and the gradual strengthening of the 
party. 

Good men trembled for the result. Violent and impru- 
dent things were done in both sections of the country, and 
to many it began to appear probable, that if the abolition- 
ists could not be met and defeated upon their own ground, 
and with their own weapons, — facts and arguments, — a 
division of the Church and of the National Union would 
be the ultimate result. 

To this conclusion Dr. Junkin seemed at last to have been 
brought, in September, 1843. In the Synod of Cincin- 
nati, the subject of abolition had frequently been presented, 
but the policy above described appears to have been usu- 
ally pursued. Dr. Junkin himself had objected to the agita- 
tion of the subject in his Presbytery; and when a paper was 
offered to the Synod by his venerable colleague and prede- 



44 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

cessor, Dr. Bishop, embodying a deliverance of abolition 
opinions, he voted to lay it on the table. This led to some 
banter and challenging on the part of the abolition mem- 
bers, which roused a spirit of defiance in the minds of their 
opponents, and resulted in a motion to take the paper up 
for discussion. Against this motion Dr. Junkin voted, but 
was in a minority of four. He then entered upon the 
discussion ; and, on the 19th and 20th of September, 
delivered his celebrated speech, which was so extensively 
read, so violently attacked, and so generally misrepresented 
to and by many who had never heard or read it. 

A portion of this speech was published in a pamphlet of 
eighty octavo pages, and aroused, of course, the very de- 
termined opposition of those who had so zealously taken 
different ground. The intensity of their hostility to the 
man seemed proportionate to the difficulty which they found 
in answering his argument. The speech has been repre- 
sented, or, rather, misrepresented, as being a pro-slavery 
argument, and its author a pro-slavery man, but no candid 
reader can so characterize it. The part of it which was 
published was entitled : 

"The Integrity of our National Union versus Ab- 
olitionism. An argument from the Bible, in proof 
of the position, that believing masters ought to be 
tolerated in, not excommunicated from, the church 
of God." 

To the pamphlet is prefixed a letter, addressed to the 
gentlemen at whose request the speech was published. An 
extract from this letter will explain the character of its 
argument and the object of its publication : 

"To the Rev. Joshua L. Wilson, D.D., Rev. J. C. 

Barnes, General Robt. B. Millikin, and C. K. Smith, 

Esq. 

" Gentlemen, — You were among the first of my friends 
to solicit the publication of that part, at least, of my argu- 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 



44] 



merit before the Synod of Cincinnati, which went to show 
from the language of the Bible, that slavery is tolerated 
therein, and not made a ground of excommunication from 
the Church. 

" The copy is now at your service. You will find it not 
so full as when spoken. Eight hours were occupied in the 
delivery of the whole, and the last three parts were com- 
pressed into half that space of time. . . . But, having 
conceived my plan, I adhered to it throughout, giving my 
principal attention to the Scriptural argument. I have 
long believed that if this nation is to be saved from a deluge 
of suicidal blood, it will be through the conservative power 
of the Word of God. . . . 

"Truth requires the public to know my general plan, 
lest they should suppose I had not met the whole subject. 
The plan of the whole speech contained four general heads, 
beside the prefatory remarks against introducing the matter 
into ecclesiastical bodies at all : 

"I. The Scriptural argument, which only you have 
here. 

"II. An aggressive movement into the abolition camp, 
— in which I carry the war into their country. Here I 
sustained four propositions: — 1. The abolition movement 
occasions the riveting of the chains of temporal bondage 
more tightly upon the colored race. 2. It tends to increase 
the intellectual bondage and the spiritual enthralment of 
that unhappy race. 3. It is a treasonable movement against 
the Constitution of the United States. 4. It aims at and 
tends to the dissolution of the Union ; and there is reason 
to believe that English abolitionists, and the British 
government, are co-operating with American abolitionists 
to divide our republic. 

"III. The question of slavery, as viewed by the eye of 
political philosophy, and of moral and municipal law. 

"IV. The divine plan of restoring man universally to 
his freedom, — first mfact, then inform, — and the applica- 
tion of it in the noble scheme of African colonization. 
This topic I did not fully discuss ; nor the great question 
why God pe?'mitted the introduction of slavery into this 
republic, and what were his designs concerning it. In 
regard to African colonization, I hastily referred to the 
success in Liberia as evidence of its practicability ; and 



442 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 



especially since the noble, philanthropic, and eminently 
successful experiment of John McDonough, of New Or- 
leans, has demonstrated the easy practicability of universal 
emancipation and real freedom. Whether ever this plan 
shall be filled up is a contingency.* 

"Very respectfully, your humble servant, 

" George Junkin." 

As great pains were taken by the aggressive, immediate 
abolitionists to make and spread the impression that Dr. 
Junkin was a pro-slavery man, his biographer deems it a 
duty to correct this impression ; and perhaps no better 
method could be adopted than to make such extracts from 
this speech as will exhibit his true position. He always 
esteemed slavery an abnormal condition of society, and 
a great social evil. He believed and taught, that the true 
spirit of Christianity was opposed to it, and tended to 
its removal. He was an early and a zealous friend of a 
judicious scheme of emancipation. Long before the name 
of Abraham Lincoln was heard of, beyond his immediate 
neighborhood, George Junkin had publicly recommended 
and advocated the plan for compensated emancipation, 
which Mr. Lincoln proposed after he came to the Presi- 
dency. As early as 1835 Dr. Junkin publicly advocated 
the consecration of the entire proceeds of the public lands 

* The Mr. McDonough mentioned in the above letter, was a wealthy- 
gentleman of New Orleans, who fitted his servants for freedom by a grad- 
ual process of education and instruction in the arts of useful industry, 
and then freed them. Two of his servants, whom he designed for profes- 
sional life, he sent to Dr. Junkin's care at Lafayette College, to be educated. 
One of these has long been a useful teacher in Liberia. It is a suggestive 
fact, that when black men were excluded from most, if not all, of the Col- 
leges in the land, Dr. Junkin, whom his opponents tried to brand as a. pro- 
slavery man, received them. Not only the two mentioned, but others 
received instruction under him ; one of them, the son of an African king 
or chief. No man was more practically and truly a philanthropist ; and he 
longed and labored for the real freedom and elevation of all men, irrespect- 
ive of color. 



PLAN OF EMANCIPATION. 443 

to the grand scheme of compensated emancipation and 
colonization. His scheme was substantially the same with 
that proposed by our late murdered President. Like Mr. 
Lincoln, Dr. Junkin perceived the immense hardship, if not 
the injustice, of any sudden breaking up of the system of 
labor which had prevailed for more than a century and a 
half in the Southern country. He was not ignorant of the 
history of the introduction of the African race into this land 
as slaves. He knew, as every well-read man knows, that 
the African slave-trade, by which this injured race had been 
introduced into our country, had been carried on chiefly 
by English and New England capital, men, and ships, and 
not by the people of the South ; that the Southern people 
had originally been merely the purchasers of "the stolen 
chattels," whilst, in many cases, the ancestors of the very 
men who were now clamoring for the destruction of that 
species of property had been the sellers of it. A sense of 
public justice and equity led his mind, as it did that of Mr. 
Lincoln, to desire that slavery might be removed gradually, 
and upon a plan that would work the least possible amount 
of injury to the slave, to his master, and to the republic. 
He foresaw, what has since happened, that a violent aboli- 
tion of the evil would cost an ocean of blood and treasure, 
and superinduce a state of things which would imperil, if it 
did not destroy, our beautiful and beneficent system of 
government. He foresaw that the abolition movement, if 
persisted in, would lead, as it has done, to an attempt to 
sunder the American Union ; which attempt, from which- 
ever section it came, would involve the country in all the 
horrors of civil war. He knew that, if such an attempt 
should prove successful, it would inaugurate, as in Europe, 
the wars of many generations ; and that, if unsuccessful, 
it would still leave the sections exasperated against each 
other, with no real bond of union except the sword. He, 
as a far-seeing statesman, knew that a forced Union would 



444 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNK IN. 

greatly endanger our free institutions by familiarizing our 
people with military coercion. And he knew — or thought 
he knew — that the inevitable results of a military emancipa- 
tion on the soil would be the arraying of race against race, 
in mutual and enduring prejudices, if not in a war of ex- 
termination. Hence his warm heart and active brain were 
early employed in devising a scheme for removing this ter- 
rible evil, in a way and by a process that would avoid these 
calamities. His scheme was compensated emancipation 
and colonization, — the separation of the races, — the very 
scheme to which President Lincoln stands committed in 
one of his ablest state papers. 

With such views, it became the duty of every good 
citizen to discourage the aggressive abolition agitation. 
Dr. Junkin, and thousands of the best minds and hearts 
of the land, desired to avoid exasperating the sections of 
the country against each other; hoping that, by delay, the 
South might discover that slavery was not only wrong, but 
also a politico-economical blunder ; and that a peaceable 
solution of the great and alarming problem might be 
reached. 

As a student of history and of the Bible, he had learned 
that grand and valuable results in God's providence, are 
always reached by slow and gradual processes. In the 
case of one of the greatest emancipation enterprises ever 
accomplished, — one which was achieved, too, by preter- 
natural Divine interposition, — the process was gradual. 
For centuries God had permitted his covenant people to 
dwell in "the house of bondage;" and when the hour of 
emancipation came, the instruments of deliverance were 
required first to ?-eason with Pharaoh, and ask him to let the 
people go ; nor did force interpose until argument and 
terror had exhausted their resources. Even after the exodus, 
it required forty years of careful training, under immediate 
divine supervision, to fit that nation of slaves for freedom. 



OPINIONS OF CONSERVATIVES. 



445 



It can readily be conceived that a conservative mind, im- 
bued with such views, would shrink from all rash attempts 
at sudden and violent abolition, even of an acknowledged 
evil ; and that, when driven into discussion, he would re- 
sist doctrines which he believed tended to injure both his 
church and his country, whilst they did not promise any 
real benefit to the slave himself. 

Whether Dr. Junkin and the conservative men of the 
country were right or not, has not yet been demonstrated 
by events ; and it is possible that such a demonstration can 
never now be made. Their plan has not been tried, and 
now never can be. Slavery is gone, so far as the system in 
its former condition is concerned. The sword has cut the 
Gordian knot which reason had failed to untie ; but it re- 
mains to be proven, whether the fragments of the cord can 
ever be so united or so used as to benefit permanently the 
emancipated race. Every good man will hope and pray 
and labor, that the best results may be attained ; but the 
intelligent statesman must sorrowfully feel, that the tremen- 
dous problem of the African in America is, as yet, far from 
solution. 

Had the zealots of the North and the "fire-eaters" of the 
South not prevented the experiments which the conserva- 
tives were disposed to make, it might have been that, a cen- 
tury hence, happier results for both races would have been 
secured than will now be attained in that time. But that 
can never now be known. One thing is already manifest, 
— that the war, under which slavery went down, has cost 
the belligerents a much larger amount of money than would 
have sufficed to carry out the scheme of compensated 
emancipation, which Dr. Junkin suggested as early as 1835, 
and which President Lincoln recommended nearly thirty 
years afterwards — and the blood might have been saved. 

But we must let Dr. Junkin define his own position in 
regard to this great issue, upon which he has been so much 
33 



446 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

misrepresented. When the crisis came, and it was neces- 
sary for him to decide whether he would remain under the 
banner that had been raised by the slaveholding States, or 
under the flag that his father had aided in consecrating to 
freedom, he hesitated not one moment, but, as we shall see, 
left all, and stood for union and liberty. In the introduc- 
tion of his speech, he says : 

" Mr. Moderator, — Ever since modern abolitionism de- 
veloped its true character it has been my policy to avoid all 
public discussion of the subject. The anger and bitter- 
ness and distraction and alienation among brethren, which 
have so generally attended its agitation, early convinced 
me that prudence for peace's sake required the exclusion 
of this exciting controversy from our church courts; and 
this policy has actuated the brethren generally with whom 
I have been called to act in my former field of labor. 
When it pleased God to locate me in a new field, I thought 
I saw additional reasons confirming the wisdom of this 
course. It was early impressed upon my mind that this 
brand had already kindled a fire which had well-nigh con- 
sumed Miami University. To such a ruinous degree did 
the fire burn within her bosom, that the Trustees took up 
the subject, and passed strong resolutions condemnatory of 
this wildfire, and commendatory of a more prudent course.* 
Hence I felt called upon to discourage a class of disputa- 
tions that resulted in evil, and only evil. The consequence 
is peace and kindly feeling between young men from all the 
States. Hence my opposition in Presbytery and in Synod 
to all attempts (and they have not been few) to agitate and 
agitate and agitate this subject 

"Sir, we have been bantered into a discussion of this 
subject. We have been told that we are afraid of the light ; 
afraid to meet the argument ; that it would soon be seen, 
upon the vote to take up, who were afraid of the truth. 
Sir, ' let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself 
as he that putteth it off.' It may appear hereafter who will 
shrink before the sword of the Spirit." 



* See Annual Catalogue of 1840, the year before Dr. J.'s advent, 



INSINUATION OF COWARDICE. 



447 



He then describes the effect that this insinuation of 
cowardice had upon the members of the Synod, especially 
the young men, and adds : 

" Thus the fire passed from bosom to bosom, and thus 
the present speaker was left in a lean minority of four 
against taking up the slavery resolutions. He had been 
threshing his wheat by the wine-presses, to hide it from the 
Midianites, and, being often urged to go forth to battle in 
this war, he had declined. Nevertheless, he had put a 
fleece of wool upon the floor to obtain a sign from the 
Lord. And now that there seems to be no longer any 
evasion, he takes it to be the Master's will that he should 
discuss this subject ; and, being forewarned by others than 
these last signs, he has not come up to this Synod wholly 
unprepared. Nor is it my purpose to skim over the surface 
of things. If we must discuss, let us do it thoroughly. 

Shallow furrows make short corn ; and shallow 
discussion yields a light harvest of knowledge. Let us 
take time to dig deep for the golden treasure in the mine 
of the Holy Scriptures. 

"Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Moderator, I was op- 
posed to entering upon this subject here, because " 

And he proceeded to specify and elaborate a number of 
reasons, which cannot be here inserted at length. A sylla- 
bus, however, will help to understand the real position 
which he occupied upon this subject : 

" I. Ecclesiastical courts in a Free State have no juris- 
diction of any kind over slavery. 

"II. The discussion will most probably degenerate into 
a mere debate or hot controversy, in which something else 
than blood will be shed. Can any brother who considers 
the excitability of the public mind doubt it ? Is it reason- 
able to expect that slavery, abolitionism, and colonization 
will be discussed here with that coolness and subdued tem- 
per, which their importance demands and Christian courtesy 
requires? Does any man expect it? For myself, I have 
passed through some stormy scenes, and" have learned by 
experience that the more boisterous the elements become, 



448 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

the more perfectly all my faculties are at command. Breth- 
ren must not infer, from my repugnance to this discussion, 
that individually I fear the heavings of the billows and the 
violence of the blast. He who commands me into these 
troubled waters, will keep me in safety. . . . Let us 
follow peace with all men as much as lieth in us. 

"III. I object to entering upon the abolition contro- 
versy, in an ecclesiastical court, because its advocates are 
organized into a political party. 

"There is a sense in which the adage, 'Religion has 
nothing to do with politics,' is true; when by politics is 
meant party wrangling and defamation. But there is also 
a sense in which the proverb is corruptly false, when by it 
men mean that the obligations of religion ought to have 
no governing influence upon political conduct, that, for 
their acts in affairs of government, men are not accounta- 
ble to God, but only to the people or to party. 

"All true Presbyterians believe that the civil government 
has no power over religious matters ; and that officers of 
the church, as such, have no kind of control in civil affairs. 
Even protection for person and property, in religious privi- 
leges, we ask not as religious men, but as civil citizens. 
As members of the civil Commonwealth we have a right to 
hold property, and to assemble for a lawful purpose ■ and 
the law protects us, not because we are religious persons, 
but civil citizens. ... I therefore contend, peremptorily, 
that this Synod has no right to intermeddle with political 
partyism. . . . And that the Abolition part}' is organized 
as a political party, . . . with its candidates for office, 
nominated and in the field, from the Presidency of the 
Union down, no one disputes. Let officers of God's 
church pause a little upon the margin of this crater, before 
we take the leap of Empedocles ; let us calculate conse- 
quences before we take the fearful plunge. 

" IV. This controversy places the peace party, as we may 
call ourselves in the premises, in a false position. It lays 
us open to the illogical and unjust, yet plausible, inference 
that we are advocates of slavery. The brethren, who urge 
this controversy upon us, are everywhere known as aboli- 
tionists, anti-slavery men ; men who labor to do away 
slavery from the land and from the world, — this is their 
boast. They wish to be called 'the Liberty party.' 



FALSE POSITION OF ABOLITIONISTS. 



449 



Liberty, what things have been done in thy sacred name ! 
The popular mind is often charmed and governed by a 
word, and the moment the anti-slavery men of this school 
meet with any opposition, the cry ot pro-slavery is raised. 
Here is the anti-slavery party. But anti means against ; if, 
then, they are against slavery, whoever opposes them must 
he for or in favor of slavery : for and against, pro and anti, 
— there it is, clear to a demonstration. All who oppose 
the political abolitionists are in favor of slavery. Such is 
the logic that actually governs many a mind. Many good, 
honest-hearted people do not know how to escape from it. 
They never perceive that there are different kinds of oppo- 
sition; that men may be opposed to a thing in one respect, 
yet not in another. Paul was a sound, clear-headed, 
warm-hearted preacher of the Gospel ; but Peter was 
opposed to Paul on a certain occasion ; therefore Peter 
was a muddy-headed and heterodox preacher. This is 
the argument by which opposers of ultra abolitionism are 
proved to be pro-slavery men. Even learned divines and 

erudite editors are caught in this cobweb We are 

not willing that honest-hearted people, by a little false 
reasoning, should be led to suppose that we are in favor of 
slavery. We are, in truth, opposed to slavery, and are 
doing as much in our respective positions to abate its evils 
as our brethren are. We differ from them as to the man- 
ner of doing away with these evils ; whilst we suppose we 
are much more efficient in the matter of meliorating the 
condition of the colored race. No disclaimer will avail. 
We tell the world — we tell our Christian brethren — our 
objections to slavery. We point to Liberia, the land of 
the free colored man, as proof of our success. But all in 
vain, — you are opposed to the political anti-slavery party, 
and, therefore, you must be pro- slavery men. 

"Such is the false position in which the shape of the 
question puts us ; and our brethren know and rejoice in it. 
They make the charge, and hold us to it, unless we prove 
our innocence. All advantages are fair in war !" 

Having thus stated his objections to the intermeddling 

of the church courts in this matter, he proposed to take 

up the question, "What does the Bible teach upon this 

subject?" And having explained the true process of exe- 

38* 



45 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

getical analysis, by which the real meaning of the Scrip- 
tures was to be ascertained, and the synthetical process, by 
which the results of such analysis were to be imparted by 
a teacher, he indicated his purpose to pursue this mode in 
his argument, and then said : 

"The opposite method I will not pursue; it is, alas! not 
uncommon even on this subject, viz., first to determine 
what the truth is, — what the Bible ought to teach on a 
given point, and then come to it in order to make it teach 
accordingly. Human reason sets itself to work, and comes 
to the conclusion that such a doctrine is true, and then 
proceeds to examine the Bible for proof of its truth ; and, 
of course, what a man's reason assures him ought to be in 
the Bible, the same reason, with the aid of a little torturing 
engine called criticism, can easily discover in it. Accord- 
ing to this method, one affirms, 'It is contrary to reason 
that three persons should exist in one Godhead.' He then 
proceeds to examine the Bible, not, you will observe, to 
ascertain what it actually does teach in regard to the mode 
of the Divine existence, but to interpret the Bible language 
so as to make it teach his own preconceived doctrine. 
Another says, ' If the horrible doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment were taught in the Bible, I would kick it out of my 
house;' and yet another, 'If I thought the Bible tolerated 
slavery, I would turn infidel and trample it under my feet.' 
Now, all these belong to the same school of interpreters. 
They all form their opinions of what the sacred volume 
ought to say, and go to it to ascertain whether it will dare 
to teach differently from their particular notions of truth. 

" But is not all this folly ? . . . Let us not come to God 
to tell Him what He ought to say in his word ; but let us 
draw near with holy reverence upon our spirits to learn 
what He hath said." 

It would be impracticable to attempt, upon these pages, 
even a syllabus of the argument of Dr. Junkin on this 
occasion. It was admitted by all, but those whom he 
opposed, to be conclusive ; and even some of the maturest 
scholars among the anti-slavery men have conceded that, 
if the Bible be the rule of morals, Dr. Junkin has demon- 



PATIENCE AND FORBEARANCE. 



45 ] 



strated, by a full and fair exegesis of all the passages which 
bear upon the subject, that the assumption that the relation 
of master and slave is of if self and necessarily a sin, cannot 
be maintained. Dr. Junkin did not argue that the relation 
was a desirable one, or a normal condition of society ; but 
that it might exist without the master being a transgressor 
in such a sense, as that he ought to be excommunicated from 
the church of Christ, and that, therefore, the church had 
no authority, from the Scripture, to make slaveholding a 
term of communion. He was unwilling to admit a principle 
which, if applied, would have excommunicated Abraham, 
the father of the faithful, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, 
and David, and Cornelius the Centurion, and Philemon, 
Paul's friend, and vast numbers of the primitive Christians. 
He was unwilling, in opposition to what he really believed 
to be the teaching of the Bible, to admit a postulate in 
morals that tended immediately to the sundering of the 
unity of the church, and to the dissolution of the Union 
of his country. He plead for patience and forbearance. 
He deprecated measures which, he foresaw, would deluge 
his country in blood ; and he endeavored to show that the 
Gospel of Peace, if left to its normal action, would inevi- 
tably remove slavery, and all like evils, from our world, 
but that it forbids the use of the sword for the accomplish- 
ment of its peaceful and beneficent ends. We give in his 
own words the conclusion of this part of his argument. It 
seemed, no doubt, to his opponents like the tones of un- 
meaning alarm. We now know that, although not inspired 
prophecy, it was the deduction, by reason, from the well- 
known laws of cause and effect, of the result which might 
have been expected. It is now in part history, — history 
written in terrible lines of blood : 

"But let us return to the conclusion furnished by the 
Scripture argument. Slavery is tolerated in the Bible. It 
is not made a term of communion, by the King of Zion. 



452 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Consequently the officers of his church have no power to 
make it one. Here is the doctrine for which we contend ; 
and by this we hope to save this fair land from being 
deluged in the blood of its inhabitants, and this free nation 
from the chains of servitude to European despots. 

" Should the opposite doctrine prevail ; should the hold- 
ing of slaves be made a crime, by the officers of the 
churches of the non-slaveholding States; should they break 
communion with their Southern brethren, and denounce 
them as guilty of damning sin, as kidnappers and man- 
stealers worthy of the penitentiary, as has been done in 
this Synod, at this time ; should this doctrine and this 
practice prevail throughout the Northern States, can any 
man be so blind as not to see that a dissolution of the 
Union, a civil and perhaps a servile war, must be the con- 
sequence? Such a war as the world has never witnessed, 
— a war of uncompromising extermination, that will lay 
waste this vast territory. All the elements are here — the 
physical, the intellectual, the moral elements — for a strife, 
different in the horribleness of its character from anything 
the world has ever witnessed. Let the spirits of these 
men be once aroused, let their feelings be chafed up to the 
fighting-point, let the irritation be kept up until the North 
and the South come to blows, on the question of slavery, 
their 'contentions will be as the bars of a castle,' broken 
only with the last pulsations of a nation's heart. 

" On the contrary, let the opposite doctrine prevail, and 
the practices which necessarily flow from it ; let the North feel 
for their Southern brethren, who are afflicted with slavery; 
let the churches of the North deal kindly and truly with 
those of the South ; let them continue to recognize and 
treat them as Christian brethren, and entreat them, and 
urge them to ' give unto their servants that which is just 
and equal,' to treat them as Christian brethren; let them 
aid them in the splendid scheme of colonization ; let them 
seek union, and peace, and love, and they will not seek in 
vain. Thus the integrity of the nation will be maintained. 
The happiness of the colored race will be promoted, in the 
highest degree, in the land of their fathers.* God will be 

* It is an impressive fact that, after the war ended, by the destruction 
of slavery, large numbers of the blacks are emigrating to Africa. Since 



OPINIONS OF THE PUBLIC PRESS. 



453 



glorified, in the triumphant success of free, republican 
America." 

Of course the delivery of this argument, and the publi- 
cation of part of it, aroused an intense opposition to its 
author, from the abolition ranks. The speech was re- 
viewed with great acrimony, as was to be expected ; at- 
tempts were made to answer it, with what success men 
would decide very differently, and a great clamor was 
raised against the man, as an advocate of slavery. No 
candid hearer or reader of the speech can infer from it 
that this charge was just. 

On the other hand, this argument was received, by the 
conservative part of the country, as the most conclusive, 
able, and temperate that had been presented. It was very 
extensively noticed, and other editions, besides the one 
originally published, were produced and exhausted. We 
cannot transfer to these pages the various opinions of the 
public press in regard to this speech. A brief one from 
the Protestant and Herald, then edited by Dr. Hill, will 
be a sufficient specimen of the approbatory notices. After 
giving the title, in the usual Way, that paper said : 

"We have read no document of the present age with 
more interest and satisfaction than this. Our only regret 
is, that the author has not given us the whole speech, of 
which we had heard so much at the time of its delivery. 
The abolitionists of the Synod of Cincinnati had made 
many strenuous efforts to commit that body to an approval 
of their efforts. The Synod from time to time laid the 
subject on the table, refusing to discuss it; which action led 
the former party to suppose that the majority of Synod 
were afraid of discussion, and that it was the lack of moral 
courage which prevented them from avowing themselves as 
abolitionists. At the late meeting the anti-abolition party, 
after much provocation, determined to take up the subject, 

this chapter was begun, official notice has been given of seven hundred and 
fifty asking to go from a single district in North Carolina. 



454 LTFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNK IN. 

and give it a fair, full, and impartial investigation. In the 
discussion, Dr. Junkin took a very prominent part, and 
was requested, by some of the ablest members of the 
Synod, to write out his speech for publication. In his 
pamphlet before us, he has given to the public the first 
part only, which contains the scriptural argument, leaving 
it doubtful whether the whole will appear or not. 
The main argument of the discourse is taken up in estab- 
lishing the position that the Bible tolerates, but does not 
sanction, the relation between master and slave. He does 
this by examining first the Old Testament, from which he 
establishes the following propositions. [Here the reviewer 
inserts the six propositions.] 

" He next examines the New Testament, from which he 
establishes the following propositions : 

" I. There is not, in the New Testament, a sentence which 
expressly forbids the relation of master and slave. 

"II. There is not, in the New Testament, a sentence 
which, by a fair and just interpretation, gives ground for 
the logical inference that the simple holding of a slave, or 
slaves, is inconsistent with a Christian profession and Chris- 
tian character. 

" These general propositions he sustains by five subordi- 
nate ones: — i. That the Greek word doulos, usually trans- 
lated servant, properly and commonly means a person held 
to service for life, — a slave. 2. Paul advises servants to 
abide quietly in their condition. This he could not do, 
if the relation of master and servant were in itself a sin. 
3. The New Testament recognizes some masters as good 
men, — true and faithful believers. Therefore the relation 
of master and slave may exist consistently with Christian 
character and profession. 4. The New Testament recog- 
nizes the existence of slavery. 5. The New Testament 
prescribes the duties of servants to their masters, and of 
masters to their servants, — enjoining to the former, obedi- 
ence ; to the latter, kind treatment. 

" From the whole he deduces two inferences, viz. : 

"I. According to the Bible a man may stand in the 
relation of a master, and hold slaves, and yet be a Chris- 
tian — a fair, reputable, and consistent professor of the re- 
ligion of the Bible. 

"II. There is no power on earth, no authority in the 



DR. JUNKIN'S POSITION. 455 

church, to make the holding or the not holding of a slave 
a term of communion, or condition of admission to the 
privileges of the church. 

"Each of these propositions is sustained with great 
learning and eloquence, and we venture to predict that the 
abolitionists will rue the day when they forced this cham- 
pion into the field. They may abuse him ; they may call 
him the advocate of slavery, and many other hard names ; 
but answer his argument they will not. We give his closing 
remarks as a specimen of the whole."* 

Of course those who took the opposite side from Dr. 
Junkin put a very different estimate upon the merits of the 
speech. And it is not the prerogative of his biographer to 
decide between the friendly and hostile opinions that were 
expressed. Nor is it his province to determine, whether it 
was wise and expedient for the author of the speech, in his 
circumstances, to throw himself into the breach and do battle 
for what he thought to be right. Of one set of facts the 
writer hereof is certain, viz., that Dr. Junkin thought it to 
be right, — to be his duty ; that he sincerely believed the 
positions he maintained; that he honestly supposed that he 
was laboring in the interests of truth, peace, and brotherly 
kindness among Christians, the safety and union of his 
country, and the ultimate welfare of the African race ; and 
that if he erred in judgment, he erred in common with 
very many of the mightiest minds and the purest patriots 
of his generation. If his name and his fame are to be re- 
proached, on account of this well-meant effort to arrest a 
tide of opinion which he believed tended to the ruin of 
his church and his country, they will be reproached along 
with the names of Webster, Clay, Frelinghuysen, Southard, 
Cass, Judge MacLean, Woodbury, Douglas, Lincoln, and 
scores of other illustrious Northern statesmen, and along 
With the names of Alexander, Miller, Hodge, Green, 

* Protestant and Herald, Dec. 28, 1843. 



456 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

McElroy, Phillips, Cuyler, Maclean, Wilson, Murray, 
Boardman, Knox, Milnor, Potter, Nott, Finley, Proudfit, 
and hundreds of the brightest lights of the church of all 
denominations. 

But whilst honesty of purpose, conscientiousness of con- 
viction, and pure patriotic motive are claimed for the subject 
of this memoir, the same is accorded to those who differed 
in opinion with him in that ardent controversy. Good and 
sincere Christian men were arrayed upon both sides. And 
if it shall ever be ascertained this side of the judgment bar, 
which of the contending parties was nearest the truth, and 
which mode of removing the acknowledged evils of slavery, 
if fairly tried, would have accomplished that object with the 
least injury to all parties, in the way most analogous to the 
modes of the Divine procedure, and with the largest meas- 
ure of good to the whole African race and to the human 
family, that question cannot yet be determined. The 
great problem is in process of solution : but the social phi- 
losopher who would undertake to pronounce it already 
solved, would only prove himself capable of jumping at 
conclusions without facts to sustain them, or reasons to 
justify his inferences. Every patriot, North and South, 
ought to rejoice, and the great mass of the people, in 
both sections, do rejoice, that slavery has been removed ; 
but the wisest patriots rejoice with trembling, and are bend- 
ing their efforts to lift up the emancipated race, and fit 
them for the freedom so suddenly thrust upon them. If 
elevated by Christianity and education, they will become 
civilized and free ; if not, they will relapse into barbarism. 
And, so long as he lived, no American was more solicitous to 
promote the welfare of the colored people than Dr. Junkin. 

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church met 
in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1844. Dr. Junkin was elected 
Moderator. His younger brothers, Colonel Benjamin Jun- 
kin, an elder, a.nd the writer of this book, were also mem- 



DR. BRECKENRIDGE ON ORDINATION. 



457 



bers, as also a nephew. It is not necessary to say, that 
a man so familiar with the constitution and the rules of 
order presided with dignity and tact. That Assembly was 
memorable for several interesting subjects which were before 
the body, viz., the questions of the right of ruling elders 
to lay on hands in the ordination of ministers ; the ques- 
tion of the quorum of a Presbytery; and the action of the 
Assembly in regard to the then recatit exodus of the Free 
Church of Scotland from the Establishment. "The Elder 
questions," as they were technically called, were brought 
up by the Rev. Dr. R. J. Breckenridge, on complaint 
against the action of the Synod of Philadelphia. Dr. 
Breckenridge, and those who acted with him, held that 
ordination was not a charm, nor a sacrament, nor a rite pecu- 
liar to the teaching ministry, but a governmental act, — that 
the ceremony of laying on of hands was merely a symbolical 
act, denoting consent to a transfer of authority to perform 
certain functions, — that in the ceremony there was no 
efficacy opus operatum, such as the clergy only could exert ; 
and that all the men constituting the Presbytery who could 
vote to grant ordination, or to refuse it, had a right to join 
in the ceremony by which the vote was carried out, in 
actual ordination. 

They held that scriptural ordination was performed " by 
the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery," and that, 
as a Presbytery is composed of teaching and ruling Pres- 
byters, the Presbytery does not properly lay on hands if 
half of its members are thrust aside and forbidden to join 
in the ceremony. 

Along with this view, they also held that, by the defini- 
tion of a quorum (Form of Government, chapter x., sec. 
vii.), the presence of one or more ruling elders was neces- 
sary to constitute a Presbytery. In this view many con- 
curred, who did not agree with Dr. Breckenridge in his 
views of ordination. 

39 



458 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK1N. 

In opposition to the above opinions, it was urged, that 
a Presbytery might vote many acts to be done which none 
but the ministers could properly do. The ruling elders 
might vote that certain sermons might be preached, but 
that did not prove that elders should preach them. They 
might vote that Baptism and the Lord's Supper should be 
administered, but they could not assume the function of 
dispensing these ordinances. It was urged, also, that a 
church officer could not confer upon another a function 
which he was incompetent to perform himself; and that 
immemorial usage had confined the imposition of hands 
to the bishops or teaching Presbyters. 

In favor of the position, that the presence of one or more 
ruling elders is necessary to constitute a quorum of Presby- 
tery, it was alleged, that the definition of a quorum in the 
book specifically mentions the elders; that if the framers of 
the constitution had meant that three ministers, without any 
elder, could form a quorum, they would have said so ; that the 
words " as many elders as may be present" could not mean 
" without any elders ;" that, in every description of a Pres- 
bytery, two constituent elements were mentioned ; and that 
to admit that a valid Presbytery could be constituted with 
only one of those elements, was to stultify the Book, change 
our representative system into a simple hierarchy, and dis- 
courage the attendance of the ruling elders in the church 
courts. 

In opposition to this view, it was urged that the office 
of ruling elder was included in that of minister; that the 
language of the quorum clause was designedly left indefi- 
nite ; that usage and expediency had sanctioned this inter- 
pretation of it, and that to adopt another construction 
might seriously embarrass the transaction of Presbyterial 
business, in places where it might be difficult to secure 
the attendance of ruling elders. 

These questions had been before the preceding Assembly 



MEMORIALS ABOUT SLAVERY. 



459 



(1843), an d decided adversely to the views entertained by 
Dr. Breckenridge and many others ; and it was on this 
account he sought a reconsideration of them. The present 
writer was a member of both Assemblies, and agreed with 
Dr. B. on the quorum question, and was the author of the 
protest presented in 1843, against the decision on that 
subject. Dr. Breckenridge was not permitted to be heard 
before the Assembly, being ruled out upon a technicality. 
The questions were decided against his views. 

Dr. Junkin, being Moderator, took no part in the dis- 
cussion, but it was well known that he was with the majority 
upon both questions, whilst his brothers took the opposite 
view of the quorum question, and joined in a protest against 
the decision. 

Memorials upon the question of slavery were presented 
to this Assembly from the Presbyteries of Chillicothe, 
Beaver, and others, and a motion was made to treat them 
with disrespect. One member moved that they be put 
under the table ; another, that they be not received. The 
present writer resisted such imprudent action, because he 
thought it tended to exasperate, and was an infringement 
of the right of petition, a right dear to all freemen. The 
petitions were decorous in language, and he urged that 
it was a wiser and a more Christian course to receive 
them with respect, and refer them, in the usual way, to 
the appropriate committee. This course was taken ; and 
the writer was gratified to learn, after it was over, that 
his brother, the Moderator, approved of his action in the 
premises. Thus, in the great emporium city of a slave 
State, slavery memorials were treated with parliamentary 
courtesy. 

But the most interesting incident, in the history of the 
Assembly over which Dr. Junkin presided, was the recep- 
tion of the Commissioners on behalf of the Free Church 
of Scotland, the Rev. Messrs. Lewis and Chalmers, and 



460 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

the action of the General Assembly in regard to that body, 
which had recently renounced the Establishment, and 
asserted their independence of the civil government. The 
gentlemen named had been commissioned by the General 
Assembly of the Free Church to visit the churches of the 
United States, and make known to them, as they might 
have opportunity, the causes of their self-denying and 
heroic exodus from the church established by law, and their 
assumption of a separate and independent ecclesiastical 
status. 

They were present at Louisville, and, at an appointed 
time, were presented to the General Assembly, in the 
presence of a vast concourse of people. They delivered 
to Dr. Junkin, as Moderator, a. facsimile copy of the Act 
of Separation and Deed of Demission, by which the General 
Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland explained and 
vindicated the important step they had taken in renounc- 
ing connection with the civil government of Great Britain, 
relinquishing their church property, their houses of wor- 
ship, their manses and glebes, and the pecuniary support 
hitherto derived from the State. In this memorable docu- 
ment they set forth the reasons for this movement ; declar- 
ing their readiness to submit to any privations rather than 
compromise the rights of Christ's crown and covenant by 
permitting the civil authorities, or careless or ungodly 
patrons, to intrude into the sacred office as pastors, in 
opposition to the convictions and the will of the Presby- 
teries, men of improper qualifications. 

Messrs. Lewis and Chalmers, in earnest and eloquent 
addresses, narrated the history of the exodus, and set forth 
the reasons therefor. It was a theme well calculated to 
warm the heart and kindle the enthusiasm of such a man 
as the Moderator. The Church of Scotland was the church 
of his ancestors. Covenanter blood coursed warmly 
through his veins. He gloried in the history of the 



RECEPTION OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 461 

church of North Britain, — in her trials, — her faithfulness, — 
her martyrs, — her glorious struggle for the truth of God, 
and for spiritual freedom. He had always been an uncom- 
promising opponent of the union of the spouse of Christ 
with Caesar, and of the support of the church by law and 
by forced taxation. He had watched with intense interest 
the progress of the struggle of the friends of purity and 
freedom against patronage and the crown and the tempo- 
rizing clergy, ever since the Auchterarder case attracted 
public attention ; and no heart more truly exulted in the 
triumph of right principles, and the demonstration of the 
recuperative power of Presbyterianism, than did his. 
When he rose, therefore, upon the Moderator's dais to 
respond to the address of the Scotch delegation, his eye 
sparkled with that peculiar brilliance which all, who heard 
him often, recognized as the harbinger of glowing thoughts 
and deep feeling. His whole countenance was radiant 
with emotion and the grand associations which crowded 
upon his mind. He began with a low, distinct, deliberate 
enunciation that was heard over the vast assemblage, and 
advanced, through a speech which none who heard it will 
ever entirely forget, rising in fervor, in feeling, and in tone, 
until a thrilling climax was reached. He welcomed, in 
behalf of the Assembly, the Commissioners of the Free 
Church; welcomed them to the hearts, the homes, the 
churches, and the fellowship of American Presbyterians; 
welcomed them as the representatives of a great body of 
believers, whose recent struggles and sacrifices had proved 
them worthy of a glorious ancestry, and as representatives 
of great principles, which, long recognized on this side the 
water, had at last, in despite of mighty repressing influences, 
nobly asserted themselves in the land of the Covenanters. 
He congratulated the Commissioners upon being the repre- 
sentatives of such men and of such principles. He gave 
39* 



462 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

a rapid, but glowing, glance at the history of past religious 
struggles in the land from which they came. He spoke 
of Knox, and Henderson, and Renwick, and Argyle, and 
many of the Scottish worthies and martyrs, who had bat- 
tled and suffered for the rights of Christ's crown and 
covenant. He rapidly traced the progress of free opinion 
as it struggled up against the weight of the crown and the 
crosier. He recapitulated the incidents of the recent 
conflict which ended in the disruption, and hailed that 
movement as an august triumph of the principle of religious 
liberty. He then recurred to the signing of the national 
league and covenant, described the sublime scene of its 
ratification by the masses with hands uplifted to heaven, 
whilst tears of enthusiasm rolled over their unblanching 
cheeks. He compared to this the recent gathering of the 
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and the 
exodus of the friends of freedom, their imposing procession 
through the streets of Edinburgh with the illustrious Chal- 
mers at their head. He then alluded to the signing of the 
solemn document (the Act of Separation) a copy of which 
he held in his hand — said its signers were worthy followers 
of those who had battled for Christ's crown and covenant 
beneath "the banner of the blue," — declared that, in his 
judgment, the men of the exodus, who had made such 
sacrifices and renounced such temporal advantages for the 
sake of religious liberty, had taken a step far in advance of 
their worthy ancestors, and when they signed and unfurled 
the declaration which sundered their connection with the 
civil power, — when they flung forth this glorious banner 
inscribed with some of Scotland's most illustrious names, 
they raised a standard around which would play the bright- 
est beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and which would 
never be lowered until the principles of truth should 
triumph, and the whole church and the whole world be 
free ! 



AN IMPRESSIVE SCENE. 463 

As he pronounced the word "flung," he threw forth the 
document in front of him, retaining in his hand the baton 
upon which it was rolled up, in such a manner that the 
scroll instantly unfurled, and displayed to the Assembly 
and the audience its entire length, with its engrossed 
declaration and its long list of distinguished names. The 
effect was electric. It was done at the moment when 
his voice had reached its most impassioned tone. The 
vast assemblage was thrilled. Few eyes were dry. Rarely 
has a finer impression been produced by a public address. 

There are members of that Assembly still living, and 
many others, who will remember the scene here so imper- 
fectly described. It was deeply engraven upon the mind 
and the memory of the writer of these pages ; and although, 
after the lapse of twenty-seven years, he does not pretend 
to give the precise words of the Moderator of the Assem- 
bly, he thinks those that were present will recognize the 
meagre syllabus as substantially correct so far as it goes, 
and that all will concede that the description is rather 
underdrawn than exaggerated. Its impromptu and spon- 
taneous character made the address and its manner all 
the more effective. The writer, who occupied the same 
room with his brother during the sessions of the Assembly, 
knows that he had made no preparation for the occasion, 
unless such as might be made in a rapid walk from his 
lodgings to the church. 

The General Assembly adopted a paper warmly approv- 
ing of the conduct of the Free Church in renouncing 
the Establishment ; deeply sympathizing with them in the 
sacrifices they had made; bidding them God-speed in the 
maintenance of their new position, and the grand princi- 
ples which led to it ; urging the ministers and churches 
under the care of the General Assembly to aid their 
Scotch brethren with material means, and inviting the 



464 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Free Church to a correspondence by an interchange of 
delegates. 

After the Assembly was dissolved, Dr. Junkin returned 
to Oxford, where he continued his labors in the University, 
passing through some scenes of external trial that have 
been already narrated. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

Dr. Yeomans President of Lafayette College — His Administration — Re- 
signs — Dr. Junkin recalled — Causes thereof — Mode of it — Faculty at that 
Time — Return — Assembly of 1845 — His Opening Sermon — Doings of 
that Body in which he shared — Deliverance on Slavery — On Romish 
Baptism — Newspaper Discussion on that Subject — Marriage Question — 
Charge to Mr. Knox — Second Church, Easton — Opposition to it— 
Troubles arising therefrom in the College — Student Drowned — Dr. Jun- 
kin elected President of Washington College — Sketch of its History — 
Visits Lexington — Domestic Affliction — Accepts the Call to Washington 
College — Resume of Lafayette — Her distinguished Alumni — Farewell 
Scenes. 

NOT long after Dr. Junkin was translated to Miami 
University, the Rev. John W. Yeomans was inau- 
gurated President of Lafayette College. He had been 
pastor at Williamstown, Mass., and, more recently, pastor 
of the First Presbyterian Church, Trenton, New Jersey, 
where he had succeeded the late Rev. Dr. James W. 
Alexander. Mr. Yeomans, soon after his accession to 
Lafayette, received the honorary degree of Doctor of 
Divinity, and we shall speak of him by that title. He 
had, upon invitation of the Brainerd Society of Lafa- 
yette College, delivered an address before them during 
Dr. Junkin' s presidency. This address drew attention to 
him as a man of mind and scholarship. It was marked by 
that vigor of thought and lucidness for which its author 
was remarkable. 

When, therefore, Dr. Junkin had made up his mind to 
resign the presidency, Dr. Yeomans was among those early 
spoken of as his successor ; and, as we have seen, Dr. Junkin 
made him a visit, and prepared the way for his election. 

(465) 



466 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

He was duly chosen and inaugurated, and entered upon his 
duties with zeal and ability. The writer of these pages 
continued for some time to be a member of the Faculty of 
instruction in the College, occupying the Chair of Belles- 
Lettres, and was thus so associated with Dr. Yeomans as 
to have good opportunities of forming an estimate of his 
talents, scholarship, and capabilities. And it is his de- 
liberate judgment that he was eminently qualified, in 
most respects, for such a position. He had brain, was a 
thinker of very superior order, a ripe and accurate scholar, 
a terse, lucid, and forcible writer, a master of great pulpit 
power, understood the philosophy of education, and was 
excelled by very few as a clear, skilful, and practically 
effective teacher. It was a mystery to many that he did 
not succeed better as the head of a college, for he possessed 
so many of the qualifications for such an office. 

His want of success was not attributable entirely, per- 
haps not chiefly, to himself; and yet there were two or 
three traits of disposition that barred his full success. He 
wore a cold and reserved exterior, a phlegmatic manner 
which made the impression that he lacked heart. But this 
was not so ; for often, when drawn out in an unbending 
mood, he was a very genial and interesting companion. 
Still it was true that his development was intellectual rather 
than affectional, and whilst in the pulpit or in other 
public speech, he could rouse and play with or allay 
any passion of the human mind, he himself would at the 
same time seem to be passionless. This habitude dis- 
qualified him from finding his way to the hearts of young 
men, and when trouble arose, either within the college, in 
the administration of discipline, or from without, he had 
not ardent friends to rally to his support. Encoun- 
tering many of the same difficulties which met his prede- 
cessor, arising out of deficient endowment of the institu- 
tion, he probably lacked his patience in enduring them. 



RESIGNATION OF DR. YE O MANS. 467 

And questions of policy arising between him and the Board 
of Trustees, he, towards the close of his administration, 
found nearly the same parties arrayed against him whose 
want of cordial co-operation had discouraged the former 
President. This he might have disregarded if he had been 
sustained by warm-hearted loyalty among the students. 
But whilst they could not but admire his great abilities and 
qualifications as an instructor, his reserved manner had kept 
him from their hearts, and he had not fully their moral sup- 
port. After a laborious and faithful occupancy of the place 
for some three years and a half, he resigned it, and left 
Easton. 

It is but simple justice to Dr. Yeomans' memory to say, 
that he rendered very valuable service to Lafayette College. 
He kept the standard of scholarship at the full elevation 
at which he found it, and introduced some beneficial 
changes. He encouraged and required thorough study, 
and the literary morale of the institution did not suffer in 
his hands. 

Upon his resignation, there seemed to be a spontaneous 
turning of all minds to Dr. Junkin as the man best suited 
to fill the post of President in the college he had founded. 
Without any apparent concert, his name was in every 
mouth ; nor is it known to this day from whom the sug- 
gestion first came. The students, the citizens of Easton 
and vicinity, neighboring ministers, and gentlemen of 
prominence, in the Board of Trustees and out of it, all 
began to ask, "Would Dr. Junkin return?" His brother, 
the present writer, lived a few miles from Easton, in New 
Jersey. He had resigned the chair he held in the Col- 
lege some years before, on account of the increase of his 
pastoral duties, and took no part in the councils of the In- 
stitution. He was surprised with the inquiry, "Do you 
think it possible your brother would return to Easton?" 
and still more surprised to learn that before he heard it, or 



468 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

had thought it probable such a wish should prevail, it was 
generally spoken of in the community. 

The Board of Trustees, feeling a weight of responsibility 
for the success of the Institution, moved, too, by this 
generally prevailing sentiment of the community and of 
the students, and no doubt prompted by their experience 
of Dr. Junkin's former administration, and by confidence 
in his qualifications, elected him President, and invited his 
return. It was unsought and unexpected by him or any 
of his kindred, and the announcement took him by sur- 
prise. 

The vote for his recall was unanimous in the Board. 
The nomination was made by one of the members, and 
seconded by another, from neither of whom such a move- 
ment could have been expected. But both of these gen- 
tlemen not only took the lead in the re-election of Dr. 
Junkin, and joined in the official request for his acceptance, 
but they wrote private letters assuring him of a cordial 
reception and co-operation. 

Some of the students, who had entered the lower classes 
whilst Dr. Junkin was President, were still in the College, 
and longed for his return ; and, indeed, there had been 
kept up a sort of traditional feeling of regard for him, 
which was participated by many who did not personally 
know him. Besides this, he had been invited, in 1842, to 
deliver the annual address before the Literary Societies of 
the College. He had accepted the invitation, and pro- 
nounced a very effective and eloquent discourse on "The 
Spirit of Protestant Colonization of North America. ' ' The 
students passed resolutions expressive of their desire that 
he would yield to the request of the Board of Trustees and 
resume the Presidency. Citizens of Easton, and clergymen 
of the vicinage, wrote letters of encouragement ; and at 
last, after examining with care into the state of affairs, his 
brother joined in the request. 



ASSEMBLY OF 1845. 469 

He was no longer expected to assume the pecuniary re- 
sponsibility of the Institution. He was guaranteed a fixed 
salary, and the Board undertook, as they had done during 
the administration of Dr. Yeomans, the management of 
the funds of the College. The result of all was, that he 
returned to Easton, in October, 1844, and resumed his 
labors in the still favorite field of his former toils. 

At the time of his resumption of the Presidency, the 
Faculty of the College consisted of Rev. Charles W. 
Nassau, Professor of Languages ; Washington McCartney, 
Esq., Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy; 
David Yeomans, Esq., Professor of Chemistry and Rector 
of the Normal School, and Hon. J. M. Porter, Professor 
of Law. In 1846, Professor McCartney resigned, and Pro- 
fessor James H. Coffin was elected. 

After his entrance upon his official duties at Easton, the 
life of Dr. Junkin was, for some years, little diversified by 
incidents out of the ordinary routine. He performed his 
duties with his accustomed zeal and energy, and the Insti- 
tution over which he presided continued to grow in repu- 
tation and usefulness. As formerly, he was ever ready to 
lend a helping hand to his brethren in the pastoral office ; 
and, in fact, preached the gospel as often and as earnestly 
as if he had been a pastor, and was as constant in attend- 
ance upon the church courts. 

In May, 1845, he went to Cincinnati as a Commissioner 
to the General Assembly, from the Presbytery of Newton. 
He opened the Assembly with a sermon from John viii. 32, 
"The truth-shall make you free," and presided until an- 
other Moderator was chosen. The sermon, delivered upon 
this occasion, was published, at the request of many mem- 
bers of the General Assembly, during the sessions of that 
body, making an octavo pamphlet of twenty-eight pages. 

This discourse made a strong impression at the time, and 
may have had some influence upon the deliverances of the 
40 



47 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Assembly that year, upon the question of human freedom. 
It evolves the author's theory of the process by which true 
liberty is to be obtained and perpetuated among a race 
once fallen. The first sentences disclose the author's views 
of genuine piety : 

" In the absence of practical holiness, there can be no 
sufficient evidence of true piety. Speculative orthodoxy, 
deep and pungent conviction, emotions of joy even to 
ecstasy, high-toned and fiery zeal, may all have existed, 
and most of them may co-exist, and yet the heart not be 
right with God. It is easy to say, Lord, Lord ; to avow our 
belief in the doctrines of religion, to love in tongue, to 
attach ourselves to some division of the great Christian 
army ; . . . but to fight the good fight of faith, to 
evince the truth and reality of our love by actions,'to em- 
body the doctrines of religion in a life of holiness, and 
show to all men that we are freed from the bonds of cor- 
ruption ; this is a different matter. Yet this is indispensa- 
ble as an evidence of discipleship." 

He discussed the subject, "Truth and Freedom," under 
three heads : — I. Man's estate of slavery to sin ; II. His 
restoration to freedom ; III. The means of his restora- 
tion. 

I. He very briefly pointed out the causes and the nature 
of man's bondage to sin: — i. Sin entered through the 
door of the understanding. The leading faculty, judgment, 
first failed by reason of false perceptions. The mind cannot 
determine in favor of evil as such. Nothing can become a 
prevalent motive to action, but that which appears good. 
Our first mother, "being deceived, was in the transgres- 
sion." Hence — 2. Ignorance of God, of ourselves, and of 
our relations to Him, produces and belongs to our moral 
degradation. 3. The pride of free will is the strongest 
link in the chain of human bondage. . . . Scorning 
subordination to the will of his Maker, man threw himself 
upon his own sovereignty, and plunged into the abyss of 



OPENING SERMON. 



471 



woe. 4. This leads to a total debasement of the affections, 
which rivets his manacles. 5. This produces utter indis- 
position and incapacity of this slave of sin to break off his 
chains and restore himself to true freedom. 

II. Under this head he stated and answered the question, 
What is true freedom? And, after a careful and thorough 
analysis, he declared it to be voluntary and cheerful action 
in obedience to the rule of right, — -pleasing to do right, — 
doing the will of God from the heart. And he proves 
that freedom in doing wrong is the opposite of this, — is 
slavery. 

III. He pointed out the means of restoration, — the 
Truth. 

True knowledge of God, law, duty, connected with a 
true and heart-swaying knowledge of the way in which a 
creature, once fallen, can be brought to a state of cheerful 
obedience to the rule of right — this is found in the grand 
remedial law, — the Gospel, — which contains all the ele- 
ments of freedom ; and which, when made effectual upon 
the heart by the Spirit of freedom, — i.e. the Holy Ghost, — 
makes the man free with the glorious liberty of a child of 
God. He shows that the soul which truly believes in the 
vicarious obedience and death of the Son of God, will, by 
the power of that faith, be made to love God and his law, 
— to love the right, — and to do it freely, cheerfully ; and 
when a man pleases to do right, he can safely do as 
he pleases, — he is free. He draws a contrast between the 
free-will scheme and the free-grace scheme ; and shows 
that the latter only can produce true liberty, whilst the 
former leads away from God and the right, and into deeper 
bondage. He traced the history of these two antagonistic 
systems, and exhibited their workings in human society, 
and their past influence upon the morals and the liberties 
of mankind ; and having exhibited the facts, he explained 
their philosophy. In doing this, he demonstrated that 



472 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNR'IX. 

spiritual freedom, as produced by the grand truth of the 
Gospel, in its natural outgrowth, produced personal, social, 
and political freedom. After designating other elements 
of social liberty, embodied in the remedial law, — the free- 
grace system, — he points to one distinguishing element, as 
follows : 

"But the principal point of special adaptation in the 
free-grace system to be the precursor and promoter of a 
free system of government, is found in its federative or 
representative principle. We have only to transfer this 
prominent feature of our theology into government, eccle- 
siastical and civil, and religious and political liberty are 
both secured. That this transfer should be made first into 
the social body called the church, when framing her form 
of government, is exceedingly natural ; and such was the 
fact. The churches, in the very first age, organized their 
government on this principle. They built up an imperium 
in imperio, — an ecclesiastical government within the civil, — 
an extended plan, which gave the people the choice of 
their own immediate spiritual rulers, and the right of being 
represented in all the courts of the church by their own 
chosen officers. Thus sprang up in the Christian church 
a representative government, limited, in its action, to 
matters purely religious, and interfering not at all with the 
civil affairs of the empire ; but always seeking the peace 
of the world and the glory of God. The light of this 
spiritual rule continued to shine upon the path of the 
Roman monarchy, Pagan and Christian, until, finding 
itself in peril of sinking under accumulated difficulties, the 
monarchy threw out its arms for help and grasped the 
Church. From this coalition resulted the hybrid monster 
of the Papal despotism. Upon its development, and 
before its cruel tyranny, the true church — Christ's own 
holy spouse, the republic ecclesiastical — retired into the 
fastnesses of the Alps, the Grisons, the Apennines, the 
Pyrenees, the mountains of Bohemia, the hills of Caledonia, 
the wilds of America. In this last .wilderness retreat, 
after centuries of iron oppression and compression, the 
grand representative principle, which the true church had 
preserved, found room to expand itself in the ecclesiastical 



DIS TING UISHED DELE GA TES. 



473 



and to pass over into the civil government. The result is, 
a vast, free, republican empire, founded upon the broad 
basis of federal representation ! How interesting the fact ! 
How beautiful the philosophy ! The truth shall make you 
free ! 

"Fathers and brethren beloved, you, — and thereby I 
mean the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, — 
and in this I mean no offence to other denominations who 
(I rejoice to know) hold the same doctrines, — you have a 
fearful responsibility in reference to the truth. To your 
hands hath the Captain of Salvation committed the Pro- 
testant banner. Yours be the honor of rallying round the 
flag of the covenants, during the conflicts of the present 
times, and during that fearful war of opinion to which 
all Christendom looks forward with such trembling solici- 
tude. Yours, I confidently believe, is the glorious destiny 
of bearing it onward, over hill, and dale, and valley, and 
moor, and mountain, until beneath its ample folds and 
heavenly sway, all the nations shall rejoice in the freedom 

Of THE TRUTH ! ' ' 

Dr. Junkin's fellow-student, and life-long friend, Dr. 
John Knox, was a delegate to the General Assembly this 
year from the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, and 
they had much pleasant, fraternal intercourse. Dr. N. L. 
Rice, Dr. John T. Edgar, Dr. James H. Thornwell, Dr. 
J. C. Lord, Dr. Krebs, Dr. McGill, Dr. Jos. T. Smith, and 
others distinguished for ability, learning, and practical 
wisdom, were members of the Assembly. Among the 
ruling Elders were Judges Grier and Leavitt, and Hon. 
Walter Lowrie. According to an immemorial usage, Dr. 
Junkin, as the retiring Moderator, was Chairman of the 
Committee on Bills and Overtures. A number of im- 
portant subjects came before that committee, and were 
reported to the house. 

Among these Overtures was one from the Presbytery of 

Ohio, asking for a decision of the question, "Is Baptism 

by the Church of Rome valid?" It was proposed to 

answer the question in the negative. This led to a long 

40* 



474 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

and animated debate, continuing through parts of six 
sessions. It was finally decided to answer the question in 
the negative, 173 voting for that deliverance, 8 against 
it, and 6 non liquet. A committee, of which Dr. Junkin 
was one, was appointed to prepare a paper explanatory of 
the grounds of this action. This committee prepared a 
paper which was adopted by the Assembly. This decision 
led to a subsequent discussion of the question through the 
press, in which Dr. Junkin took a somewhat prominent 
part. The Princeton Review disapproved of the decision 
of the Assembly, and published some able arguments in 
opposition to it. Dr. Junkin, Dr. R. J. Breckenridge, and 
others defended the action of the Assembly. In that 
decision the church has ever since acquiesced. 

As chairman of the Committee on Bills and Overtures, 
Dr. Junkin reported Overture No. 3, being a collection of 
petitions and memorials upon the subject of slavery. The 
committee recommended that the petitions from Chillicothe 
and Donegal Presbyteries be read before the Assembly, and 
that a special committee of seven be appointed, to which 
all papers on the whole subject be referred. This was 
done. The petitions were read, and a committee appointed, 
consisting of Messrs. Rice, Lord, McGill, N. H. Hall, Lacy, 
Leavitt, and Dunlap. 

This committee, on the fifth day of the sessions, made a 
report, which gave rise to considerable discussion, and 
which was adopted by the very decisive vote of 168 yeas 
to 13 nays, and three non liquet. 

This deliverance of the General Assembly* has been, 
perhaps, more misunderstood and misrepresented by the 
churches and parties holding to extreme abolition views 
than any other act of our chief judicatory. But it is thought 
that a candid perusal of that able paper will show that, 

* See Minutes, 1845, pp. 16, 17, 18 ; also Baird's Digest, p. 811. 



ORDINATION OF MR. KNOX. 



475 



whilst the Assembly refused to take steps in advance of the 
authority of Scripture, and to adopt measures divisive of the 
church and the country, there is no approval of the evils of 
domestic slavery, and no withdrawal or denial of the pre- 
vious testimony of the church upon that subject. So, indeed, 
the Assembly of the following year explicitly declared.* 

After the Assembly dissolved, Dr. Junkin returned to 
his home and to his duties in the College, and was not 
much engaged in other public affairs for some time, if we 
except the discussion already alluded to upon the validity 
of Romish baptism. His communications upon this ques- 
tion were published in the Presbyterian. 

In the church courts Dr. Junkin was always a welcome 
member, and, although he did not often speak, his counsels 
were listened to with profound respect. He was called 
upon not unfrequently to preach upon special subjects, 
and to take part in ordination and installation services. 
On such occasions he was always rich, instructive, and 
suggestive. One of them will be remembered with interest 
by the members of the Presbytery of Newton who still 
survive. It was the ordination of the Rev. J. H. Mason 
Knox (now Dr. Knox), and his installation over the church 
of German Valley, New Jersey. Dr. Junkin delivered the 
charge to the pastor. Mr. Knox was the son of the fellow- 
student and beloved friend of Dr. Junkin, Dr. John Knox, 
of New York, and the grandson of his revered theological 
preceptor, Dr. John M. Mason. Dr. Knox was present, 
and had preached the sermon upon the occasion. 

When Dr. Junkin arose to deliver the charge, the mem- 
ories of the past, and the tender associations of three 
generations, seemed to crowd upon his heart ; and his voice 
trembled with emotion as he uttered the first sentences of 
his address : 

* Minutes, 1846, p. 207. 



476 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

"My dear young brother," said he, "this day, with 
gratitude and joy of heart, we behold another proof of the 
faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God. A hundred gen- 
erations have passed since He recorded the sweet promise, 
' My Spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have 
put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor 
out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of 
thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for- 
ever.' 'The" children of thy servants shall continue, and 
their seed shall be established before thee.' (Isa. lix. 21 ; 
Ps. cii. 28.) A thousand proofs of its verity have been 
witnessed in the past; and we this day see another added 
to the already long list. Here stands the son, the grand- 
son, the great-grandson* of those whom God enabled to 
be faithful to their covenant engagements that they might 
become the living and honored witnesses of his own cove- 
nant faithfulness. The son of my early friend, the com- 
panion of my youth, with whom, oh, how often ! I have 
taken sweet counsel, and gone to the house of God, stands 
before me. The grandson of my venerated, almost adored, 
theological teacher stands forth this day appointed and 
commissioned, by the authority of Jesus Christ, to preach 
the glorious Gospel of the blessed God. And by the same 
authority, it has become my duty to address to this son of 
a godly, a ministerial ancestry, the word of solemn ex- 
hortation. Can it be otherwise, then, but that my mind 
should teem with visions of the past ? How can I exclude 
from my thoughts the image of the venerated dead ? Can 
thirty years break down the laws of association, and erase 
the deepest impressions of the memory? Can time anni- 
hilate the strong and tender bonds of Christian love ? 

"But, if possible, would it be expedient? If I could 
command away these memories, — what the profit ? May 
not their entertainment and presentation to you, sir, and 
to this auditory, be the very best accomplishment of my 
present function ? Paul enjoins, ' Be ye followers of me, 
even as I also am of Christ.' And we may learn many- 
useful lessons from the example of those who have gone 
before us, even when they were not infallible. 



* The father of Dr. John M. Mason was Dr. John Mason, an eminent 
minister of Christ. 



CHARGE TO MR. KNOX. 



477 



"Now, among all the dead, and all the living, of whom 
I have obtained knowledge, personally or by reading, none 
comes so near my beau ideal of the great Apostle to 
the Gentiles as John M. Mason, of New York ; unless it 
be John Calvin, of Geneva, whom the former used to 
denominate the Paul of the Reformation. For mere 
physical properties, — for all that is addressed to the eye 
and to the ear, — for dignity of mien, for impressive influ- 
ence of presence and of manner, for loftiness of style and 
tone, for the thunder-storm of eloquence, deep, awful, and 
resistless, the American excelled both the European and 
the Asiatic ; for both these labored under physical disad- 
vantages which never impaired the power nor impeded the 
progress of the other." 

This introduction to the charge is quoted for the double 
purpose of giving the reader some insight of the author's 
heart, and as a specimen of the ardor of his manner upon 
interesting occasions. 

The whole address is richly instructive in the varied 
duties of the pastoral office, abounding both in the phi- 
losophy and the scriptural lessons of the subject, and in 
practical ilkistrations drawn from the example of Dr. Mason 
and other eminent ministers. 

Ten years before this, he had thrilled a vast congrega- 
tion of the same Presbytery by a charge given, upon a 
similar occasion, to his own brother, when ordained pastor 
of the First Church of Greenwich, New Jersey. 

The population of Easton was increasing during these 
years, and many persons in the place, and others in the 
Presbytery, within whose bounds it then was, were of 
opinion that Presbyterianism ought to enlarge its borders 
in that town. The First Presbyterian Church, then under 
the pastoral care of the late Rev. John Gray, D.D., was full 
to overflowing. The edifice had been enlarged several times, 
but still many who desired it could not obtain seats. 

With a view to meet the demand for increased means of 
grace, Dr. Junkin commenced a series of lectures on ex- 



478 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

perimental piety in a Baptist church located in a part of 
the town remote from the Presbyterian church. This ex- 
ercise was held in the afternoon of the Sabbath, so as not 
to interfere with the worship in the other churches, whose 
services were conducted morning and night. Before en- 
gaging in this work, he had made a request, in writing, 
addressed to the Session of the Presbyterian Church, for 
their consent to the undertaking and co-operation in it. 

The Session gave consent to his preaching, but in such 
terms as indicated that the proposal was distasteful to them. 
The lectures were commenced, were well attended, and 
were maintained so long as Dr. Junkin remained in Easton. 
Many were edified, some were converted to God, and the 
result was what Dr. Junkin had frankly informed the Ses- 
sion was the intention at the time he asked permission to 
begin the service, — a movement for the organization of a 
second Presbyterian church. Notice of their purpose to 
apply to the Presbytery for an organization was duly given 
to the authorities of the First Church by those who favored 
the enterprise, and in process of time the application was 
made. 

To the surprise of many, the movement was strenuously 
resisted by the Session of the First Church, and by some 
of its prominent members who were not in official station ; 
whilst others of that congregation favored the movement. 
After a very full investigation of the whole matter, the 
Presbytery resolved, with a great degree of unanimity, to 
grant the request of the applicants; and a committee was 
accordingly appointed to carry the order of Presbytery 
into effect. Shortly afterwards the Second Presbyterian 
Church was duly organized, and went into operation. 
Dr. Junkin, and other members of the Presbytery, con- 
tinued to supply the new church until it obtained a 
pastor. 

But this result was not reached without a most unex- 



SECOND CHURCH, EASTON. 



479 



pected amount of opposition, and a warm conflict in the 
Presbytery. This could not have been foreseen, for the 
necessity for church extension in that place was almost 
universally admitted. The animus of the opposition it is 
not easy to conceive, but it was powerful, persistent, and 
lasted three years beyond the period at which Dr. Junkin 
was translated to Virginia. The Rev. Dr. John Skinner 
was the pastor of the church during this time. At last, 
after a struggle of four years or more against the difficulties 
in its way, the church applied to Presbytery to dissolve 
its organization, assigning as the reason the opposition 
above alluded to. Accordingly, at the meeting of the 
Presbytery in April, 1851, the church was dissolved. 
Most of the material of which it was composed sought and 
obtained organization as a Reformed Protestant Dutch 
Church, which is still in existence, — a highly respectable 
congregation. 

Into the merits of the controversy concerning the subject 
of a second church in Easton, it is not the intention 
of the biographer to enter, and it is mentioned chiefly 
because of the influence it had in ultimately leading Dr. 
Junkin to yield to a call to another field of labor. It is 
probable, that if he could have anticipated the nature and 
intensity of the opposition to a second church he would 
have refused, from prudential considerations, to join in 
the movement. But that opposition did not fully develop 
itself until he was so far committed to the movement that 
he could not recede with honor and a good conscience. 
He was profoundly convinced that the welfare of souls and 
the glory of Christ demanded the enterprise. And whilst 
some may doubt the wisdom of his participation in the 
movement after he found that the authorities of the First 
Church were against it, especially in view of the fact that 
this opposition included Trustees of the College, who had 
hitherto exerted a controlling influence in the Board ; yet 



4 8o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

none who knew the man will for a moment doubt the purity 
and disinterestedness of his motives. 

The personnel of this opposition, with the exception of 
the pastor of the First Church, was identical with that 
which, in 1840, had wrought annoy, and, including him, 
was identical with the agency which had removed Dr. 
Yeomans from the College. As might have been appre- 
hended, at the first opportunity the bad feeling which had 
been excited showed itself, in the Board of Trustees of the 
College, to the embarrassment of the President and the 
Faculty in the administration of its affairs. A rule, which 
had been adopted in 1840 by the Board, to cover the case 
of discipline already mentioned, and which Dr. Junkin 
was assured was abrogated before he was recalled to the 
Presidency, was revived. This was a rule granting to a 
student an appeal to the Board of Trustees against the 
decisions of the Faculty in certain cases: which would 
give to the portion of the Board living near to the College 
practical control over its discipline, — a result inevitably 
destructive of the paternal authority of a faculty and of 
the discipline of a college. This and other matters gave 
opportunity for the inauguration of one of those struggles, 
alas ! too common in the history of American colleges, 
which marred the comfort and usefulness of the President 
and the Faculty of the College. 

The details of it would have little interest for the general 
reader ; and, as all the men prominent in these scenes have 
gone to their final account, we dismiss the subject with 
only the mention which is necessary to vindicate the 
memory of the chief sufferer. This can be done by a 
statement of general facts, which all persons familiar with 
the constitution and workings of Boards of Trustees of 
colleges will understand. 1. A portion of the members 
of the Board lived in Easton, and they, of course, would 
feel a lively interest in the College, and would be apt 



TROUBLES IN THE COLLEGE. 4 8i 

to have their feelings interested in case of any trouble. 
2. Of these a small majority, and they active and influen- 
tial men, took part against the President and against the 
Faculty, who, with one exception, were with him. 3. When 
the distant members of the Board, who were unaffected by 
local interests and feelings, were present, the majority was 
the other way, and the course of the President was sus- 
tained. 4. But it was difficult, except at the Annual Meet- 
ings, to obtain a full attendance, so that local details fell 
under the control of those resident in Easton. 5. The 
great mass of the citizens of Easton, outside of a single 
church, and many within it also, were with the President 
and the Faculty in judgment and feeling. 6. The students 
also, with a single exception, adhered loyally to their 
President. 7. His brethren of the Presbytery, with two 
or three exceptions, approved of his course. 8. At the time 
he ultimately left, the College was in a highly prosperous 
condition, so far as numbers and morale were concerned ; 
the classes being larger than usual, and the last class that 
graduated under his administration being the largest that 
had ever left the Institution ; and immediately after his 
departure, the attendance of students was reduced to a mere 
handful. 

It might excite surprise, that in such a condition of things, 
a man of Dr. Junkin's vigor and firmness would become 
in any degree discouraged. But. the men who had grown 
lukewarm or hostile, although few in numbers, had been 
among the most demonstrative friends of the College, were 
persons of social position, controlled some wealth, pos- 
sessed much adroitness and pertinacity, and held on to 
their places, and the College was like a house divided 
against itself. 

Still, though perplexed, the President was not cast down, 
but continued to labor for the welfare of his favorite Insti- 
tution. 

41 



482 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

On the ioth of June, 1847, an event occurred which 
threw a deep gloom over the College and the community, 
and deeply moved Dr. Junkin's tenderest sensibilities. 

The only son of his beloved friend and fellow-student, 
Dr. Robert Steel, of Abington, was in attendance as a 
student in the College, in his second college year. He 
was a youth of much promise, peculiarly correct, kind, and 
courteous, and much beloved by his teachers and fellow- 
students. On the day above mentioned he had gone into 
the Delaware to bathe, and was drowned. So soon as the 
tidings of the sad event reached the President's ears, he 
hastened to the river, and, with characteristic energy, 
made every exertion for the recovery of the body. His 
heart was deeply affected, and when others, after nightfall, 
abandoned the search as useless, he, with some of the 
students, continued it; nor did he relax his diligence until 
all that remained of his beloved pupil was restored to the 
anguished hearts of the stricken parents. 

In the summer of 1848 the Trustees of Washington 
College, at Lexington, Virginia, elected Dr. Junkin to the 
Presidency of that Institution, to fill the vacancy occa- 
sioned by the resignation of the Rev. Henry Ruffner, D.D. 

Washington College had grown out of a Classical School 
or Academy founded by the Rev. William Graham, assisted 
and encouraged by other Presbyterian ministers and the 
people of their charges. 

That part of Virginia (the Valley) had been settled 
chiefly by Scotch, or, rather, Scotch-Irish, people, who 
adhered to the Presbyterian faith and forms. 

Mr. Graham was the boy, mentioned in a previous chap- 
ter, who was a fellow-refugee with Dr. Junkin's father, in 
the block-house, on the banks of the Paxtunk. He was a 
man of devout piety, considerable learning, and an earnest 
worker. As the School began to flourish about the time 
of the commencement of the struggle which resulted in the 



HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COLLEGE. 



483 



independence of America, it was called " Liberty Hall." 
It was eminently useful in training men for the ministry, 
and for other professions, and was justly beloved by the 
people of that part of Virginia. 

During the Revolutionary struggle, the prince of patriots, 
George Washington, himself an Episcopalian, had seen 
men and their patriotism tried in the crucible of war ; and 
he had found that the cause of his country had no more 
reliable friends than the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of 
"West Augusta." When, therefore, the Legislature of 
Virginia had made repeated efforts to induce him to accept 
some pecuniary expression of their love and veneration, he 
persisted in refusing, until at last he consented to give 
direction to the bestowment of a gift of stock in the James 
River Canal, but not to receive it himself. The Legislature 
consented, and Washington directed that the gift should 
be bestowed upon "Liberty Hall," near Lexington. 

This was done, and, the stock having been commuted, 
the chief part of the endowment of the Hall was derived 
from this source. The Trustees accepted the benefaction, 
obtained a college charter, changed the name to Wash- 
ington College, and inaugurated a Faculty. Funds from 
other quarters were received, a beautiful site was selected, 
handsome buildings were erected, and the Institution has 
been a source of great benefit to Virginia and the country, 
numbering among its Alumni some of our most eminent 
men. 

Dr. Junkin made a visit to Lexington to examine for 
himself the character and prospects of this new field. 
After his return, and under the urgency of his brother and 
other friends, he came slowly and reluctantly to the con- 
viction, that the hand of God was again beckoning him away 
from his " Lovely Lafayette. " The College to which he 
was called had what was then deemed a respectable endow- 
ment. A majority of the Board of Trustees were Presby- 



484 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

terians, and in full accord with his own views. It was 
surrounded by a homogeneous population, and there was 
every prospect of a peaceful prosecution of his favorite 
work. 

Besides this, his friends, in Pennsylvania and New Jer- 
sey, felt that he had endured enough of the toils and sacri- 
fices incident to the founding of a college, and that he 
ought to accept of a place where some at least of these 
would not be required. And it seemed to them, that such 
a man ought no longer to be held to a labor which some, 
from whom he had a right to expect better things, had 
been endeavoring to make the task of Sisyphus. He 
accepted the appointment. 

There was another consideration, which may have had 
influence in inclining Dr. Junkin to seek a field of labor 
in a milder climate. His second son, Joseph, had, for some 
years, been in imperfect health. He was a young man of 
fine scholarship, a graduate of Lafayette College. He had 
been laboring as a classical and mathematical teacher at 
Edge Hill School, Princeton, N. J., where, indeed, he had 
sustained the burden of the Institution, on account of 
the almost constant absence of the principal. Under his 
arduous labors his health declined, and pulmonary disease 
manifested itself, and, before the removal to Virginia was 
decided upon, it had been determined that the invalid 
should seek a Southern clime. 

Dr. Junkin had now been connected with Lafayette Col- 
lege for about thirteen years. It was sixteen years since 
he first entered upon his duties, and he had been three 
years and a half at Miami. When he came, there was not 
a foot of land, a stone, or a dollar belonging to the Insti- 
tution. When he left it, it was in such condition as to 
promise that, if properly managed, it might reach the 
eminence which it has since attained. Perhaps no College 
in the land had, at the age of sixteen years, given so large 



LAST COMMENCEMENT OF LAFAYETTE. 



485 



a number of scholarly, valuable men to the Church and to 
the country. To name but a few, Lafayette already num- 
bered among her Alumni such men as the Rev. David 
Coulter, of Missouri ; Rev. James B. Ramsey, D.D., of 
Virginia; Rev. W. H. Green, D.D., of Princeton; Rev. 
Ninian Bannatyne, of Washington ; Hon. William A. 
Porter, of Philadelphia; Rev. John M. Lowrie, D.D., of 
Fort Wayne; Rev. Wm. D. Howard, D.D., of Pittsburg; 
Rev. Thomas C. Porter, D.D., of Easton ; Rev. Charles 
Elliott, D.D., of Chicago Seminary; Rev. Isadore Loewen- 
thal, the erudite and gifted Israelite, who gave the Bible in 
their own language to the people of iVfghanistan; Rev. Robert 
Watts, D.D., of Belfast, and others worthy to be named in 
such a catalogue. Besides these, many other eminent men 
obtained part of their education and mental development, 
under Dr. Junkin and Dr. Yeomans, in this Institution. 

The last Commencement of Lafayette College, at which 
Dr. Junkin presided, was a day memorable in his history 
and that of the Institution. Not having, as on former 
occasions, the use of the Presbyterian church, the Com- 
mencement exercises were held in the spacious assembly- 
room of the Odd-Fellows' Hall. A large audience was 
present, — many from a distance. The Board of Trustees 
was more full than usual, although that part of the local 
Board, which had not been in accord with the Faculty, 
did not appear until near the close of the public exercises. 
When the President of the Board came in, and made an 
announcement in regard to the opening of the next College 
term, he was received with a very general and decided de- 
monstration of disapprobation by the audience and by the 
students, which was very improper, and which none de- 
plored more than Dr. Junkin himself. But it was a sponta- 
neous outburst of pent-up feeling, which he could not have 
anticipated, and could not instantly repress, although he 
immediately made the attempt. 
41* 



486 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

When the exercises closed, and the parting moment had 
come, the members of the Senior class approached their 
beloved President to bid him a final farewell. They could 
not speak, — tears rolled down those manly, youthful cheeks. 
They grasped his hand, one after another, in silent adieu. 
The undergraduates pressed forward and did the same, until 
every student present, numbering about one hundred and 
twenty, had taken his hand and bade a silent, tearful fare- 
well. It was a spontaneous movement, without preconcert 
or arrangement. The young men wept, the President 
wept, the audience was in tears, whilst no sound was heard 
except the quiet tread of those noble young men as they 
advanced to the dais, pressed their President's hand, and 
retired. 

The writer of this page was present at that scene, of 
course not an unmoved spectator. Beside him, on the 
stage, sat the Rev. Dr. John M. Krebs, of New York. 
This eminent minister was deeply moved by what he saw, 
and exclaimed, in a voice choked with emotion, "This 
is the proudest day in George Junkin's history ! The tears 
and silent eloquence of these young men present a vindi- 
cation and a eulogy that need no addition !" 

Another eye-witness of this impressive scene, the Rev. 
Dr. J. H. Mason Knox, thus alludes to it in his eloquent 
memorial discourse, delivered shortly after Dr. Junkin's 
death : 

"It was no small trial for Dr. Junkin a second time to 
give up the care of an institution in which he had spent so 
many of the best years of his life, for which he had toiled 
assiduously and sacrificed so much, and in which, moreover, 
he had been so eminently successful as an educator, and 
had established his fame in this regard in all the land. The 
parting was a most thrilling scene. I can see him now as 
he stood upon the Commencement-stage, in September, 
1848, and apostrophized 'Lovely Lafayette,' bidding her, 
in any time of need, to 'send down the Valley for her 
friend, whose devotion to her interests could never grow 



FAREWELL SCENES. 487 

less. until his heart should cease to beat.' The students 
rushed from their seats to his side, and each young man, 
as he bade his honored, beloved President farewell, was 
bathed in tears ; and the Rev. Dr. Krebs gave utterance to 
the feeling, which was welling up in every heart, in the 
exclamation, 'George Junkin, this is the most glorious 
day of your life ! ' 

"It may not be amiss," Dr. Knox continues, "to say 
further, that Lafayette did not recover for many years from 
the staggering blow she received from this second resig- 
nation of her Father and Founder, — not, indeed, till the 
name of George Junkin again appeared in her list of 
instructors." 

Whilst this last remark of Dr. Knox is literally true, it 
is not claimed that the revival of the College was promoted 
so much by Dr. Junkin' s direct agency, as by the fact, that 
its authorities and its very efficient President, Dr. Cattell, 
were known to be in accord with him ; and that his faith, 
prayers, and known zeal for it may have aided to secure 
public confidence and the blessing of God. His professor- 
ship was Emeritus in the department of Political Economy. 
We shall see that after his return from Virginia he took a 
lively interest in Lafayette. 

Alluding to the above scene, Dr. Sprague says, in his 
biographical sketch in The Memorial Volume : 

"His parting with his classes at Lafayette, on Commence- 
ment-day, was a scene of the most tender interest ; and 
the estimation in which he was there held was sufficiently 
indicated by the fact that twenty-six of those who had been 
his students there, appeared at Washington College to 
resume their studies under his direction."* 

These were chiefly of the higher undergraduate classes, 
and among them were such men as Robert Watts, D.D., 
the successor of Dr. Cooke in the Chair of Theology in Bel- 
fast; Rev. R. M. Wallace, of Altoona; Rev. A. W. Sproull, 

* Memorial, p. 145. 



488 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

of Chester, Pa. ; Rev. John Armstrong, of Iowa ; Rev. 
A. M. Lowry, of Port Carbon; Rev. E. D. Finney, of 
Maryland, and others. 

When it is remembered that, at that time, Lexington 
could only be reached by one hundred and twelve miles 
of staging from Winchester, the estimate of his instructions 
formed by these young men will seem enhanced. 

A few days before his departure from Easton, the follow- 
ing paper was presented to him, expressive of the sentiments 
of the citizens : 

"At a numerous meeting of citizens of Easton and 
its vicinity, assembled at the Odd-Fellows' Hall, in pursu- 
ance of public notice ; on motion of Mr. John J. Burke, 
Hon. John Cooper, M.D., was called to the chair, and Dr. 
Charles Innes appointed secretary. 

" The object of the meeting being stated, the Rev. John 
Vanderveer moved that a committee of seven be appointed 
to draft resolutions, whereupon Messrs. T. M. Cann, John 
J. Burke, Daniel Lachenaur, M.D., R. S. Chidsey, John 
Eyerman, George Field, and Philip Mixell were chosen. 

"The committee retired, and, after a short deliberation, 
submitted the following preamble and resolutions, which 
were unanimously adopted : 

" 'Whereas, The Rev. George Junkin, D.D., the founder 
and firm supporter of Lafayette College, has resigned the 
Presidency of the same ; a station, the duties of which, in 
the language of the Board of Trustees announcing the fact, 
"he has ably performed for sixteen years, with the excep- 
tion of a short absence;" and 

" ' Whereas, Daring all this period, he has most ably and 
zealously advocated, and sustained in our midst, the inter- 
ests of education, morality, and religion ; therefore, 

" 'Resolved, That we receive with deep and heartfelt 
regret the announcement of his removal from a sphere in 
which he has been so pre-eminently useful, and that we 
regard his departure as the withdrawal of one of our purest 
and brightest luminaries. 

" 'Resolved, That, though we recognize the fact that the 
labors of the Christian philosopher, wherever put forth, 
enure to the benefit of the world in general, yet we cannot 



RESOLUTIONS ON PARTING. 



489 



but lament the departure of one who has been, and is still, 
so deeply cherished by those with whom he trod the classic 
ground, and who is beloved, by every true philanthropist, 
for his unwavering integrity, his fearless and indefatigable 
efforts for the promotion of truth; and we feel assured 
that the community, which has secured his services, has 
obtained a most valuable acquisition. 

" ' 'Resolved, That the thanks of this meeting, together 
with a copy of these resolutions, be given to the Rev. 
George Junkin, D.D., for his eminent services, and that 
these proceedings be published in the papers of our Borough, 
The Presbyterian, of Philadelphia, and the Watchman of 
the South. ' 

"John Cooper, Chairman. 

" Charles Innes, Secretary." 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Award in Dr. Junkin's Favor — Departure for Virginia — Farewell — Wash- 
ington College — Enters on Duty — Inaugural Address — No Change in his 
Instructions— Faculty — Route — The Invalid goes South — Dies — His 
Character — Dr. Junkin's Preachings — Bensalem — Baccalaureates — In- 
fluence on General Education — Family Statistics — Major Jackson — 
Heavy Afflictions — Mrs. Junkin's Death — Her Character — Consolation 
— Mrs. Jackson's Death — Prof. Fishburn's Death — The elder Daughter 
married — The colored Boy taken — Blessed are they that mourn — Educa- 
tional Correspondence — Fraternal Fellowship — New Brunswick Speech 
— LL.D. — Temperance Labors in Virginia — Agricultural — Public Trou- 
bles — Labors and Sacrifices for Peace and Union — John Brown Raid — 
Resistance to Secession — Letter to Governor Curtin — Letter of Eli K. 
Price — Correspondence on Public Affairs — Virginia Secedes — The Flags 
raised, taken down, burned — Commotion in the College— Resigns — Exo- 
dus from Virginia. 

SOME delay in his departure for the future scene of his 
labors was occasioned, by the difficulty of obtaining a 
settlement of Dr. Junkin's claims upon the Board of Trus- 
tees of the College. A disposition to deny those claims, 
in part, was shown by two or three, but at last a Rule of 
reference was obtained by him, and the choice of the arbi- 
trators left to the Board itself or its representatives ; and 
there was awarded to him, after a thorough investigation 
of the accounts, a little more than he had claimed. This 
matter adjusted, he and his household took another affec- 
tionate leave of their numerous friends in Easton, and set 
forth for the Valley of Virginia, to make another home 
among strangers, and to enter upon a new field of labor. 

Washington College, Virginia, although a well-appointed 
institution, and usually manned by an able Faculty, had 
never attracted to its halls the numbers which its reputation 
(49o) 



PRESIDENT OF WASHINGTON COLLEGE. 



49] 



and appliances for education merited. It was difficult 
to account for the fact ; yet some reasons were palpable. 
The University of Virginia, located at Charlottesville, 
just over the Blue Ridge from Lexington, was the favorite 
resort of the sons of that ancient Commonwealth. The 
optional character of its curriculum — i.e. the plan of 
allowing the student or his parent to select which of 
the studies, taught in the institution, he would pursue — 
had peculiar attractions for some. Hampden Sidney Col- 
lege also divided the Presbyterian patronage of Virginia. 
The Virginia Military Institute, in the same town with 
Washington College, was also a rival, and had attractions 
for youth in its military appointments, and, being sustained 
in part by State bounty, was less expensive ; whilst many 
of the sons of Virginia still resorted to the older colleges 
of the North and East. 

Dr. Junkin did not find so much difficulty in inaugu- 
rating suitable discipline in Washington College as he had 
at Miami University. The morale of the institution was 
better ; and he had comparatively little change to make in 
the regime of the institution. 

He entered upon his duties as President of Washington 
College in October, 1848, but was not formally inaugu- 
rated until the next Commencement, the latter part of June, 
1849, when he delivered his inaugural address. He was 
not long in identifying himself with the new community in 
which his lot had been cast, and with the interests of the 
grand old Commonwealth of which he had become a citi- 
zen, so far, at least, as its real advantage was concerned. 
Whilst he had in the North resisted aggressive abolition as 
tending to break up the peace of the country, divide the 
Union, and deluge the land in blood, he never was of 
opinion that slavery was a normal condition of society, or 
of any advantage to the moral or material interests of the 
country in which it exists. Whilst he was not willing, as 



492 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

we have seen, to adopt the principle that in every case the 
holding of a slave is a sin per se, and whilst he resisted 
with all his power the proposal to excommunicate from the 
church men who gave evidence of piety, though they held 
servants in bondage, he never held that slavery was a 
blessing, but rather a curse. His residence in a slave 
State did not abate this conviction. He considered it 
a great evil in its moral, religious, and economical aspects. 
As a system of labor, he saw that it paralyzed the im- 
pulses of industry, and retarded improvement. He looked 
upon it as a wrong to the servant, but as a greater curse to 
the master. 

Had the field been open for fair, calm, and instructive 
discussion of this great social problem, it cannot be reason- 
ably doubted that Dr. Junkin would have aimed to bring 
the lights of science, economics, and religion to bear upon 
it. But the abolition excitement had rendered that field 
a field of fire. Men's passions were roused, and discus- 
sion would have placed the interests with which he was 
identified in peril, without any reasonable prospect of 
countervailing good. 

True, he did not change his lectures upon moral phi- 
losophy and political economy so as to adapt them to the 
latitude in which he now labored ; the manuscript notes 
of his lectures show, that he did not fail to teach the same 
systems of moral philosophy and political economy as for- 
merly ; but to have assailed slavery upon the soil where it 
existed, and in the style of the abolitionists, would have 
been to do what he believed to be wrong, what the ultra 
abolitionists themselves never did, and what would at once 
have banished him from his field of labor. It cannot be 
reasonably doubted, by any who knew Dr. Junkin and the 
breadth and thoroughness of his teachings, that the thirteen 
years of his labors in Virginia have told, and will yet tell, 
beneficently upon the minds that were brought under his 



THE INVALID GOES SOUTH. 



493 



influence ; and that the principles which he inculcated 
have had, and will continue to have, in the several commu- 
nities in which these minds are found, a happy tendency 
in the reorganization of Southern society, and adapting 
it to the new state of things which has been forced 
upon it. 

At the time Dr. Junkin became President of the College, 
its Faculty consisted of the Rev. Philo C. Calhoun, Profes- 
sor of Greek, George E. Dabney, Latin, Rev. Dr. George 
D. Armstrong, Natural Philosophy, and Major D. H. Hill, 
afterwards Major General Hill of the Confederate Army, 
Professor of Mathematics. 

The route and the mode of travel by which the family 
reached Lexington illustrate the changes which have taken 
place in the country since 1848. They went by steamboat 
from Baltimore to Fredericksburg, by rail to Gordonsville, 
and thence in stage-coaches to Lexington. 

A few weeks after the family arrived at Lexington it be- 
came manifest, that, unless the efficacy of a milder climate 
would produce a change, Joseph, the second son, whose 
loss of health has been already mentioned, must sink into 
an early grave. It was determined that he should proceed 
to Florida, in the hope of recovering his health. The 
older son, John M. Junkin, had recently settled at Tren- 
ton, New Jersey, as a physician, and it was deemed best 
for him to accompany his invalid brother to the South, 
so that every possible attention might be secured. The 
medical brother came on to Lexington, and, after a tender 
parting from the anxious and affectionate home circle, the 
two set out upon that long journey from which but one 
of them was to return. In due time they arrived at Mari- 
anna, Florida, where they obtained comfortable quarters 
for the winter. The tidings that reached the home circle at 
Lexington from the absent one, who was now the object of 
concentrated solicitude, varied almost weekly, sometimes 
42 



494 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 



awakening hope, and again bidding it expire. But as the 
months rolled on, the expectation of ever seeing his face in 
the flesh became feebler; and on the 3d of April, 1849, 
this noble youth laid his pilgrim mantle by, and found a 
grave in a land of strangers, in the sands of Florida. He 
died in the twenty-sixth year of his age. His was a pecu- 
liarly lovely character ; amiable, discreet, affectionate, in- 
telligent, scholarly, pious. Although he had been deterred 
from making a profession of religion by a self-distrust, 
superinduced by the very high standard which he had 
formed of the requisites to a Christian profession, none 
who knew him, much less any who knew him intimately, 
doubted that he was a true Christian. 

The decease of this lovely and beloved son and brother, 
was a heavy stroke upon the family at home, and it was an 
event which was mourned by a very wide circle of kindred 
and friends. But they sorrowed not as they who have no 
hope. 

That part of Dr. Junkin's life which he spent in Vir- 
ginia was not marked by many incidents of the kind to 
impart interest to narrative. Its tenor was even. The 
regular routine of college duties, and the constant preach- 
ings of the gospel, in which, of course, he still abounded, 
whilst they make up the chief part of a man's usefulness, 
do not furnish the staple of attractive biography. From 
prudential considerations, he, of course, made as few 
changes in the college routine and curriculum as possible, 
but aimed, by an energetic practical administration, to 
make, the scholarship of the College high and thorough ; 
and in all his efforts he had able and effective assistance 
from the other professors. 

Wherever he went he must needs preach the gospel, and 
he soon established a regular religious service in the Col- 
lege Chapel, at such an hour as not to interfere with the 
attendance of the students upon the morning service of 



BA CCALA UREA TES. 



495 



the churches. Besides this, he soon took charge of a small^ 
congregation called Bensalem, four miles from Lexington, 
which he continued to serve, much to their edification, for 
about ten years. The people of this little flock became 
much attached to him, and he to them, and pleasant fruits 
of his ministry were there gathered. He also preached 
frequently in the church of Lexington and in others in 
the region round about, far and near, and, as in the 
former fields of his labors, was always welcomed to the 
pulpits of his brethren, both by pastors and people. 

He still aimed, in his baccalaureate discourses, to ad- 
vance the interests of general education, as connected 
with, and dependent upon, a high standard of college 
education. As examples, his first baccalaureate was "An 
Apology for College Education ;" in which he illustrated 
and enforced its bearing upon schools of every inferior 
grade. In the next, he presented a kindred subject, 
"The College Curriculum;" and, in 1851, a strong plea 
in behalf of the proposition, that " The Colleges of Vir- 
ginia have a right to a part of the Literary Fund." In 
his next, he unfolded some of the causes of the failure of 
a college course, in many cases, to produce the desired 
results, tracing the failure, in most instances, to the evil of 
"premature entrance," which was his theme. Thus, from 
year to year, he produced a series of educational papers, 
exceedingly suggestive and valuable in themselves, and well 
calculated to lead their readers and hearers to a higher and 
broader appreciation of the great work of education, in its 
philosophy, its materia and practical details. 

In conventions which were held with the object of ad- 
vancing the general interests of education, he bore an active 
part, and was always vigilant and untiring in personal 
efforts to that end. His correspondence shows that he 
exerted an extensive influence with his pen, by conferring 
with other men in different parts of the State and of the 



496 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

country, and he neglected no opportunity of advancing the 
cause of education and religion. 

Thus several years of his life were passed in the quiet 
and happy discharge of the duties of his position. The 
society of Lexington was very congenial to his tastes and 
to those of his family. It was a highly intelligent commu- 
nity, and the general sentiment was decidedly favorable to 
religion. The Presbyterian Church was the largest and 
the most influential in the place, and the prominent men 
of the community threw the weight of their influence in 
favor of religion and good morals. Indeed, many of 
the leading men were professing Christians, and some of 
them office-bearers in the churches. That excellent min- 
ister, the Rev. William S. White, D.D., was pastor of the 
Presbyterian church of Lexington, during most of the time 
of Dr. Junkin's sojourn in that place, and with him he 
had much pleasant fraternal intercourse. 

At the time Dr. Junkin removed to Lexington, his oldest 
son, John Miller, was located at Trenton, as a physician ; 
his third son, and namesake, had just completed his law 
studies in the city of Philadelphia, where he opened an 
office, and has ever since remained in successful practice. 
His fourth son, Ebenezer Dickey, having graduated at 
Lafayette, was engaged as a classical teacher in Fredericks- 
burg, Virginia, and his fifth, William Finney, remained for 
a few months teaching in New Jersey. Afterwards, the 
latter repaired to Lexington, where he took his first degree 
in the arts, in the class which graduated at Washington 
College in 1851. In the autumn of that same year, he 
and his brother, E. D. Junkin, who, meanwhile, had been 
teaching at Mount Holly, N. J., with Dr. Samuel Miller, 
entered the Theological Seminary at Princeton, in which 
they remained until they graduated in 1854. 

On the 4th of August, 1853, the second daughter of Dr. 
Junkin, Eleanor, was united in marriage to a young man 



DEATH OF MRS. JUNK IN. 497 

named Thomas J. Jackson, a native of Virginia, and a 
professor in the Virginia Military Institute. He was a 
graduate of West Point, — had served with some distinction 
in the war with Mexico, — had been several times brevetted 
for gallant and meritorious conduct, — and had retired from 
the army with the brevet rank of major, by which title he 
was usually addressed. He was an unobtrusive — almost 
diffident — young man, of good mind, exemplary morals, 
devout piety, and remarkably conscientious upon all ques- 
tions of duty. The young people continued to be mem- 
bers of Dr. Junkin's family until the tender tie that bound 
them was sundered by the hand of death, a little more 
than a year after their marriage. 

But before this sad event another heavy affliction fell 
upon the stricken household. On the 23d of February, 
1854, the wife and the mother "was not, for God took 
her. " On the 1 1 th of the next month there appeared in the 
Presbyterian, of Philadelphia, an obituary notice from 
the same hand that traces these lines, and it is, in part, 
transferred to these pages as a just tribute to the memory 
of one well known and dearly loved : 

"The departure from this to a higher life of this gifted 
and lovely Christian woman, is an event of its kind of more 
than ordinary interest, and demands more than a transient 
notice. 

"'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his 
saints,' and it ought to be precious in the estimation of all 
that love the Lord. Precious, considered as an accession 
to the ranks of the saints in glory ; precious, as a proof of 
God's faithfulness ; precious, as an illustration of the effi- 
ciency of the grace of Christ in giving the victory over 
pain, and fear, and death, and the grave ; precious, as an 
earnest of a like triumph of all who possess ' like precious 
faith ;' precious, as a means of converting those who have 
not this faith. Such was the death of Mrs. Junkin. She 
lived a life that was sure to end in such a death ; and no 
believer can be indifferent to a scene so demonstrative of 
42* 



498 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

the power of godliness, so radiant with the presence of 
Jesus. ' ' 

After a brief account of her birth, parentage, education, 
conversion, and marriage, the notice proceeds : 

"Soon after her marriage, in 1819, Mrs. Junkin accom- 
panied her husband to the field of labor to which he had 
been previously called at Milton, Pennsylvania. There 
she passed about eleven years of her life, devoted to the 
happiness of her family, the service of her Lord, and the 
interests of Zion. Universally admired and beloved in 
tha community, perhaps no lady ever withdrew from it 
whose departure was more generally and sincerely lamented ; 
and many hearts, in that first field of her usefulness, will 
swell with sorrow when the tidings of her death shall be 
announced. 

"After her husband was summoned from pastoral life to 
the field of Christian education, her position made her 
more widely known, and wherever known her character 
inspired the warmest regard. In her native city, in Ger- 
mantown, in Easton, at Oxford, and in the Valley of Vir- 
ginia, in which she ended her pilgrimage, she was beloved 
and venerated by all who made her acquaintance. 

" Hers was a most symmetrical Christian character. In 
it were blended, in finest harmony, all the elements most 
desirable in a Christian lady. Without the splendor that 
dazzles, or the masculine vigor that annihilates the peculi- 
arities of her sex, her mind was above mediocrity, and was 
well stored by wise and apposite reading, whilst her sweet 
and gentle temper, her unsullied delicacy, her perennial 
Christian cheerfulness, her sincerity, her wit sprightly but 
never barbed, her affability and considerateness, her benev- 
olence, her warm and loyal friendship, and, above all, her 
delicate and steady reverence for the right, eminently fitted 
her for the sphere of life to which she was called, and which 
she so happily adorned. 

" She was indeed a ' helpmeet' for the Christian pastor, 
and for the presiding officer of a literary institution ; and 
many a fond parishioner, and many a grateful student, will 
cherish to their latest day the remembrance of her coun- 
sels and her kindness. To her counsels and to the gentle 
eloquence of her lovely Christian example did the writer 



CHARACTER OF MRS. JUNKIN. 499 

of these lines owe more, whilst a student, than to any 
other human instrumentality. And he is not alone. 

"Mrs. Junkin's was a life of unceasing Christian industry, 
cheerful, unostentatious, yet effective. In her family, in 
the church, and in the field of Christian education, her toils 
and sacrifices were constant, and a goodly number of valu- 
able ministers owe their introduction to the sacred office in 
a greater or less degree to her industry and her means. 

"As a daughter, a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, who 
that knew her needs to be told what she was ? Her life was 
a self-denying yet happy ' patient continuance in well 
doing,' and, as might have been expected, her end was 
peace, — more than peace, — it was triumph. 

"Throughout a protracted and painful illness, every 
Christian grace, demanded in her circumstances, seemed to 
be in lovely, placid exercise. After conscientiously acquies- 
cing in every effort of medical skill for her relief, when 
told by her dearest one that 'hope had fled, that the Lord 
was coming,' she calmly and sweetly replied, 'Well, his 
will be done. How soon? To-day?' 'Yes,' said the 
anguished husband, 'in a few hours.' 'Thank the Lord ; 
the struggle will not be long. He that shall come will 
come, and shall not tarry.' 

" This opened a scene which is seldom witnessed, even in 

' The chamber where the good man meets his fate, 
So privileged beyond the common walk 
Of virtuous life, quite on the verge of heaven.' 

" But, however desirable to describe it for the praise of 
the glory of God's grace, there is not space for detail. A 
sentence or two must suffice. 

"When asked, 'Have you any word of advice for us?' 
she replied, 'I'm so exhausted I cannot say much. "The 
Lord will provide : ' ' trust Him. I put my trust in Him long 
ago. He'll not forsake me. He has given sweet promises; 
I just took Him at his word. . . . Well, let Him — let 
Him come ! He'll do all that's right. He'll take me to 
Himself. I have no fears, — no fears at all.' When subse- 
quently asked, ' Is Jesus with you ?' ' Yes ; He is precious, 
I put my trust in Him alone, — alone.' 

"Her two younger sons are just about closing their course 
in the seminary at Princeton ; and when asked if it would 



5 oo LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

not have gratified her to have lived to hear them preach 
the gospel, she touchingly replied, — alluding to her diffi- 
culty of hearing, — 'But I could not have heard them!' 
When asked for a message for them, she said to them and 
all her children, ' Live near to Christ, and be kind to 
one another;' and subsequently added, 'Don't banish 
me, — talk cheerfully of me, — think cheerfully of me. I'll 
be with you oftener than you think. I'll watch over you: 
"Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister 
to them who shall be heirs of salvation?"' Laying her 
hand upon the head of her youngest child, who, a fort- 
night before, had completed the family ingathering by 
uniting with the church, she said, ' It is such a comfort, 
Julia, that you were brought in before I was called.' 

"After sending messages to her absent dear ones, — giving 
a parting kiss to her children, — she sought her husband's 
hand, gazed intently upon him, and faltered, ' Darling 
husband, we have lived long and happily together, and 
we'll not be long apart.' She gave him a parting kiss, and 
passed to the better land. 

" ' She died as sets the morning star, which goes 
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides 
Obscured amid the tempests of the sky, 
But melts away into the light of heaven !' " 

Rarely, if ever, did the hand of death sunder a marriage 
tie of greater tenderness, or one that had been productive 
of a larger amount of real felicity. For nearly thirty-five 
years it had held them together in a life of unbroken har- 
mony, unfaltering confidence, and deep affection. Those 
who lived in the closest intimacy with them never knew 
of the slightest ripple in the sweet and smooth current of 
their affection ; and it is believed there never was one. 
Of course the stroke was, upon the survivor, a very heavy 
one. He mourned her deeply, and with a tenderness truly 
affecting; but such was his perfect faith in the blessedness 
of her change, and such his unshaken confidence in the 
wisdom and goodness of a covenant-keeping God, that his 
sorrow was not like the sorrow of other men. There was 



CONSOLA TION. 



SOI 



a brightness — almost an exultation — in it which nothing 
could impart except that faith which is " the evidence of 
things not seen." Indeed, for years he seemed to feel that 
she was more constantly present with him than she had 
been whilst in the body ; and this feeling never left him 
until consciousness seemed suppressed in his own dying 
struggle. Nor do we know that it then forsook him. Her 
miniature was always placed upon his study-table, so that 
at any moment he could turn an affectionate glance upon 
it j and memories of her seemed to mingle with all his 
thoughts, and even with his severer studies, without in the 
slightest measure interrupting them. In speaking of her 
to his children, or writing of her to them, or to his brother, 
he usually spoke of her as "sweet mother;" and it was 
affecting to witness the tenderness with which this man of 
strong intellect and mighty will cherished the memory of 
this best of wives. He sometimes in his letters expressed 
the fear that this sentiment was verging towards the 
idolatrous. 

A few extracts from his correspondence with his elder 
daughter, who spent the winter of 1855 in Philadelphia, 
and his son, Rev. E. D. Junkin, will give some insight of 
his inner life in this season of affliction. Less than a year 
after Mrs. Junkin's death, he wrote as follows : 

" Lexington, Jan. 8, '55. 

.... "Yes, indeed! I remember the Christmas glee 
of last year, and your sweet mother's happy face. It has 
rarely been two successive hours from before my eyes since 
last February 23d, whilst I am awake. Ah ! how I see her 
everywhere ! . . . And when I turn toward the unpressed 
and unruffled pillow at my side. Every night I have a 
quarrel with God for taking her away. I say, ' Why ? oh, 
why ? Could she not have done immense good for many 
years to come?' But the Lord answers me, 'I gave her to 
you for thirty-five years. Was that not enough? Who 
else has been so blessed ? Who ever folded in his arms for 



5 o2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

so long a time one of my sweet, precious ones, so ready 
for the heavenly fold?' And thus, dear M., I am stricken 
dumb, and find not one word to say against it. And 
yet, when the next night comes, the same battle has to 
be fought over, and He gives the same victory. Thus He 
is drawing me up ! 

"Oh, yes ! Your sweet mother and sweet E.*are sitting 
in the glorious, holy society above. Oh that I were fitted, 
as they were and are, for the happy home ! She said, 'I'll 
know dear Joseph!' Yes, she knows him well; and she 
has not forgotten us, — 'I'll be often with you when you 
don't know it.' This, too, is doubtless realized. My 
spirit has often, I believe, sweet intercourse with theirs; 
and sometimes a fragment of the joy is left in the confused 
relics of dreamy consciousness. 

"Well, my dear child, I can hardly say I passed a sor- 
rowful Christmas ; or that any other day is so. It can 
hardly be called sorrow. I dare not call it joy ; but it is a 
mingled state of emotion higher and holier than either, or 
both. I seem to myself to have a more constant appre- 
hension of your sweet mother's presence than when she 
used to sit at the window or flit about the house. In all 
positions I see her, — blooming in youth, and more sweet 
in her last years, — or emaciated, and breathless, and cold, 
— all sights are lovely, because I obey her dying breath, — 
'Think of me as a happy spirit in heaven.' That's the 
end of it all. And we'll soon see it so, if we prove faith- 
ful and submissive. . . . You give very good advice about 
health. Yes, her advices have far more influence over me 
than when she too was in the flesh. I do take extreme 
care of myself for her sake and her children's. . . . 

"Major J.f is well, and growing heavenward faster than 
I ever knew any person to do. He seems only to think 
of E. and heaven." . . . 

To his son, Rev. E. D. Junkin, he wrote, January 8, 
1858: 

" I have no better wish for you than that you find as 

* Mrs. Jackson. 

f The late Lieutenant-General Jackson, who was still an inmate of Dr. 
Junkin's family. 



DEATH OF MRS. JACKSON. 503 

good a wife as I had, and live as happily and as long. — or 
so long as God pleases. It is wonderful the proportion of 
my thoughts that are devoted to your dear mother. She 
is still a more constant companion with me than when she 
sat in this very room. When I look at the miniature, 
morning and evening, the question, When shall I see her 
sweet face? almost idolatrously precedes the question, When 
shall I see my Lord face to face ? I often pray to be de- 
livered from this kind of idolatry. ... As to praying for 
you, — that duty is as regular as eating my own meals. I 
doubt not, our prayers mingle as they rise." 

Afflictions seldom come singly. Eight months after 
the decease of the mother, the daughter, Mrs. Jackson, 
was also taken. Eleanor Junkin had been married, as has 
been stated, to Major T. J. Jackson, on the 4th day of 
August, 1853, and on the 23d of October, 1854, a little 
more than one year thereafter, she went to the better 
land. Her babe and she were laid in the same grave. 
It was a terrible blow to the father, the brothers and 
sisters, and especially to the gallant and the godly young 
husband, who loved her with a most intense affection, of 
which her beautiful and symmetrical character and per- 
sonal loveliness were worthy. He continued an inmate of 
Dr. Junkin's family for several years thereafter, and to him, 
and to them all, the sore affliction seemed to be greatly 
sanctified. 

During a visit made to Lexington in the winter of 
1856, the writer of these pages became more thoroughly 
acquainted with this young man, who, a few years after- 
wards, was so famous for military prowess and strategy, the 
almost idol of the Southern Confederacy. No one could, 
at that time, have perceived, in the modest, almost diffident, 
young professor of the Virginia Military Institute, the ele- 
ments of high command and soldierly genius which were 
subsequently developed in the world-renowned " Stone- 
wall" Jackson. He appeared to be a plain, unassuming 



S°4 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 



Virginia gentleman, possessed of sound judgment, good 
common sense, high-toned honor, deep Christian humility, 
and remarkable conscientiousness. Many sweet and pleas- 
ant hours did we spend in private Christian fellowship. 
The impression was left upon the writer's mind, that he 
was indeed "a devout soldier," but he never suspected 
that beneath that quiet, almost bashful, exterior there slum- 
bered the genius and the energies of a great captain. 

The relations and the intercourse between Dr. Junkin 
and this son-in-law, both before and after the death of Mrs. 
Jackson, were those of a fond father and an affectionate son. 
In his letters to the present writer, the former usually spoke 
of Major Jackson as " my dear young son." And few can 
appreciate the anguish it cost those hearts to be torn asunder 
by the public calamities which shortly after ensued. 

Other changes occurred in Dr. Junkin's family from year 
to year, by which a part of it was taking deeper root in 
the Southern country. His younger son, William F., 
became the pastor of a church in the vicinity of the 
celebrated "Natural Bridge," in the Valley of Virginia, 
and married a Virginia lady in 1855. His fourth son, 
E. D. Junkin, settled as pastor in North Carolina, and, 
in 1858, married the daughter of a minister of the gospel 
in the neighborhood of his field of labor. In 1856, his 
younger daughter was married to Junius M. Fishburn, 
Professor of Latin in Washington College. But this happy 
union proved of short duration. In a year and seven 
months after their marriage, Professor Fishburn was sum- 
moned away by death. He died on the 26th of March, 
1858, much lamented by all who knew him. He was an 
accomplished scholar, an amiable man, and a devoted 
Christian ; and his death made a profound impression upon 
the students and the community. Previous to this afflic- 
tion the elder daughter, Margaret, was married (in 1857) 
to Col. John T. L. Preston, of Lexington, a Professor in 



DEATH OF A GRANDSON. 



5°5 



the Virginia Military Institute, and a gentleman of high 
social position. Mrs. Preston, both before and since her 
marriage, has not been unknown to fame as a graceful and 
effective writer, in the departments both of poetry and 
prose. She is the author of three volumes which have 
commanded high eulogy, and of many fugitive pieces. 

By these extensions of the family affinities a mysterious 
Providence was preparing the way for severer trials, as yet 
in the womb of the future, which, in a few years, were to 
test the faith and lacerate the affections of the subject of 
this memoir, and of his household. Before the trials inci- 
dent to the breaking out of the civil war befell him, his 
heart was to be again sorely wounded by a shaft from the 
hand of death : another lovely object of his affections, upon 
whom he had bestowed an almost idolatrous love, was 
smitten down. His sprightly and beloved little grandson, 
George Junkin Fishburn, the child of the deceased profes- 
sor, was taken from them on the 15th of August, 1859, at 
the age of two years and two months. In his loneliness, 
after the death of Mrs. Junkin, this child seemed to have 
come into Dr. Junkin's inmost heart. He had been his 
almost inseparable companion, and perhaps no other trial 
of his life more deeply affected him. Ever after this loss he 
seemed fearful of permitting his affections to cling to any 
earthly object. These and other afflictions had a manifest 
mellowing influence upon his heart and upon the tone 
of his piety; and thenceforth his "conversation was in 
heaven " to a marked degree. 

A few extracts from letters written during these years to 
Mrs. P., and others of his children, will indicate his habi- 
tudes of thought and feeling : 

. . . . " In permitting this trial, God has wise ends, 
which you may not now be able to see, but may hereafter. 
'He will make it plain.' All things shall work together 
for good. There is no sweeter and more practical doctrine 

43 



506 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

in the Book than this of the Divine sovereignty. My habit 
has been to study all the facts before me, get all the light 
I can, pray for direction, then decide according to the 
dictates of conscience, and follow up the decision with all 
my might, assured that it is the Lord's will. And even 
when it turns out badly, I don't murmur against God, — 
scarcely against myself: I take it as a chastisement. 

"This method has been censured in Cromwell; but I 
never could see a reason, good and sufficient, for the cen- 
sure. If I can find an error in judgment, or from wrong 
feeling, that has led me into trouble, I submit, without re- 
pining, to all its inconveniences, — confess my sin before 
God, obtain absolution, and begin anew. There is no 
safer method than entire submission of our own will to 
that of God. ' Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He 
will bring it to pass :' ' He will never leave thee :' 'I just 
took Him at his word,' and ' He'll never forsake me.' " 

In a letter to his son, Rev. E. D. Junkin, he says : 

" M. and hers are well. G. is a fine boy; but I cannot 
love him as I did G. J. F. No ! no ! nor will I ever love 
a creature of God so again, till I go to the place where love 
and bliss immortal reign." 

Among the correspondence of Dr. Junkin we find many 
letters from other educators, presidents, and professors 
of colleges, and gentlemen interested in the great sub- 
ject of education, asking for his views upon various 
topics connected therewith. These letters attest that his 
reputation as an educator was wide-spread, and that his 
opinions were sought under the conviction that they were 
of value. One (from t*he University of Michigan) asks his 
opinion upon the great question of the co-education of the 
sexes, and the admission of females to the college classes. 
Another asks his opinion in regard to the value and impor- 
tance of the Greek and Latin classics as instruments of 
mental culture. Others seek for hints in regard to the best 
process for organizing new colleges. Others ask — and this 
catalogue is quite numerous — for his opinion of the effect 



EDUCA TWNAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



5°7 



of secret fraternities among students and the alumni of col- 
leges, upon their discipline and efficiency, and upon the 
standard of scholarship. To all these, it appears from the 
indorsements, he returned prompt answers; but, as no 
copies were retained, we have no means, except from a 
general knowledge of his opinions, of ascertaining the 
character of the replies given. 

His letters to his children, and to his brother, afford 
abundant proof of the kindly feelings which he cherished 
towards his ministerial brethren in Virginia, and of the 
measure in which he prized and enjoyed their fellowship. 
Letters received from these brethren abound with proofs 
that his regards were reciprocated ; but we cannot afford 
space for extracts. A single specimen must suffice. On 
the 17th of February, 1853, in a letter to his son, then in 
the Princeton Seminary, he replies to inquiries made by 
the latter, in regard to the state of morals and religion 
in Washington College, and gives statistics, some quite 
encouraging, some less so, and adds : 

"One circumstance which greatly encourages us is the 
fact that the pious and sedate students have, beyond dis- 
pute, the pre-eminence in scholarship ; and our mark is 
high. My fond hope is, that from twelve to twenty of those 
now here will find their way up to the high and solemn 
office. 

"The cry for help rings through our mountains and 
valleys and we tremble in apprehension of an increase of 
our need by the calling away of two of our most valued 
and beloved brethren, Dr. McFarland and Brother Morri- 
son. The former has been down all winter, and it is feared 
he may not rise until the trump of judgment awakes his 
glad dust from its long slumber. The latter has had a bad 
hemorrhage within a week, and great fears are entertained, 
and little hopes, as to the result. 

" Pray ye the Lord of the harvest. But, alas ! those in 
the office cannot get bread. Oh that He, whose are the 
silver and the gold, would put into the hearts of his own 
people to devise just things !" 



S o8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

With the brethren named in this extract he had much 
pleasant intercourse. He often assisted the latter, the 
Rev. James Morrison, at communion and other services ; 
and their correspondence discloses a very cordial brotherly 
affection. Neither of these excellent ministers was taken 
at that time ; and after Mr. Morrison was laid aside from 
labor, Dr. Junkin supplied his church (New Providence) 
for a time, and his son, Rev. E. D. Junkin, was afterwards 
called to the pastorate, in which he still continues. Dr. 
McFarland lives (1871), but Mr. Morrison went to his rest 
a few months ago. 

In 1856 Dr. Junkin was invited, by the literary societies 
of Rutgers College, New Jersey, to deliver before them the 
annual address. This duty he performed, much to the sat- 
isfaction of the societies, the authorities of the College, 
and a large and appreciative audience, as was indicated 
by repeated and enthusiastic applause during the delivery 
of the discourse, and by approbatory notices after it was 
published by request of the societies. This was the more 
remarkable, because his subject embraced topics of great 
delicacy and difficulty, and such as five years later involved 
the country in the horrors of civil war. 

The authorities of Rutgers College conferred upon him, 
at that time, the honorary degree of LL.D. 

During these years Dr. Junkin did not relax his efforts 
in the cause of temperance, but labored to promote the 
principle and practice of total abstinence. He was urged 
to this not only by the many cases of intemperance in the 
community in which he dwelt, but more especially by the 
fact that the demon had invaded the College and compelled 
the discipline and, in some cases, the expulsion of students 
who, but for this destroyer, might have been ornaments of 
the institution and a comfort to their parents. Of course 
his efforts awoke some opposition, but the moral tone of 
Lexington society repressed the exhibition of the rougher 



LOVE FOR THE CONSTITUTION. 



5°9 



style of opposition, and confined it chiefly to parties who 
either were engaged in the traffic or were themselves fond 
of the dangerous indulgence. 

It ought to be mentioned, as part of Dr. Junkin's Virginia 
life and labors, that he could not abstain from his favorite 
pastime — agriculture. During his entire life he was fond 
of "tilling the ground." In his first pastorate, and whilst 
presiding over the three colleges which claimed his labors, 
he found time for this employment. He purchased a small 
farm near Lexington, to which he added by purchase from 
time to time, until, at the date of his exodus from Virginia, 
it contained two hundred and sixty acres. This he caused 
to be cultivated under his personal supervision, and with 
improved modes and implements of husbandry. Its pro- 
ductiveness was steadily increasing ; and had he remained, 
he would have demonstrated the capabilities of the lands 
of the Valley to the great encouragement and improvement 
of the agriculture of the region. As it was, his influence 
in this direction was beneficial. 

Thus did years pass usefully and pleasantly until the time 
approached in which, by God's mysterious permission, the 
madness and folly of men brought upon our beloved 
country the dire calamities of civil war. To avert these 
evils Dr. Junkin did what he could. Always conservative, 
— cherishing a profound veneration for the Constitution 
of his country, and convinced that that instrument con- 
tained ample provisions for securing all the rights of all 
sections of the nation, — he had always labored, both North 
and South, to inculcate the doctrines of the Constitution, 
and to inspire his countrymen with love for its principles. 
When the imprudence of violent and extreme men had 
at last involved his country in the storms of political 
strife, and threatened to precipitate a war of sections, he 
redoubled his efforts to allay the storm and arrest the 
thu iderbolts. 

43* 



5 io LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

With the great mass of the men by whom he was imme- 
diately surrounded, he was happily in accord upon most 
of the questions at issue. He was an intense lover of the 
Union ; so was Virginia, and especially the people of the 
Valley. The country in which he lived gave a fraction 
more than ten to one of a Union majority at the election 
for members of the Convention which ultimately proposed 
the secession movement. In that Convention, when it 
first met, there was a large majority of men utterly opposed 
to secession. But the people of Virginia were almost 
unanimous in their opposition to aggressive abolition, and 
so was Dr. Junkin. They and he held that the subject 
of slavery ought to be left where the fathers had left it 
in the Constitution, a question, not between the national 
Government and any of the States, but between State and 
State. He held that the Constitution required of each 
State the rendition of fugitives from criminal justice and 
from labor, upon legal demand sustained by proof; but 
that the claim for such rendition lay against the authori- 
ties of the State in which the fugitive was found, not, in 
the first instance, against the Government of the United 
States ; and he held that the latter had no jurisdiction over 
such questions, unless brought before the courts of the 
United States by due process of appeal. He of course held 
that all legislation in contravention of this doctrine was 
unconstitutional. These views, upon proper occasion, he 
advocated. 

There was a society of the citizens of Lexington for 
mutual improvement, called '■' The Franklin Society." It 
embraced men of the highest intelligence and social posi- 
tion. Among Dr. Junkin's papers is found an official invi- 
tation, in pursuance of a formal vote, asking him to attend 
at his convenience and take part in its discussions. In 
1859, at the time when public troubles were topics of 
discussion, his voice was earnestly raised in behalf of con- 



LABORS AND SACRIFICES FOR PEACE. 



5 11 



servative principles and measures, and especially in behalf 
of the American Union. At the meetings of this society, 
and upon other suitable occasions, he pointed out the 
danger of rash counsels and of extreme views, sought to 
reassure his Southern fellow -citizens in regard to the 
designs of the great majority of the Northern people, and 
gave freely and fully his interpretation of the Constitution, 
which was, that this great charter of our country's safety 
was alike opposed to secession on the one hand, and to the 
invasion by the national Government of rights properly 
belonging to the States on the other. He neglected no 
opportunity of allaying needless agitation, and of striving 
to avert the impending dangers. He deprecated, as utterly 
useless and mischievous, the whole agitation connected 
with the assertion and denial of the right to carry slaves 
into the Territories of the United States. He considered 
the Southern claim an abstraction of no practical value, 
and resistance to the claim equally futile as a practical 
question, for he knew that there was no Territory into 
which slavery could be profitably carried, and that, there- 
fore, it was worse than folly for the one party to assert a 
right which they never could use, and for the other party 
to dread an evil that never could, in the nature of things, 
become a reality. 

After the John Brown raid, his correspondence shows, 
that he labored to allay the sectional excitement which it 
produced, by assuring those among whom he dwelt, that it 
was the mad effort of a disordered enthusiast, which they 
ought not to ascribe to the whole North ; and by decided 
remonstrance against that morbid sentiment which, in a 
few Northern minds and presses, seemed inclined to justify 
invasion, riot, and murder, because they were professedly 
done in the anti-slavery cause. 

When the dreadful crisis which he had long appre- 
hended, and which, seventeen years before, he had pre- 



5I2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

dieted, seemed just at hand, he put forth every exertion 
which his circumstances permitted to avert the calamity of 
civil war. Not satisfied with the positions assumed by 
either of the larger parties into which the country was 
divided in i860, he voted for Hon. John Bell, of Ten- 
nessee, and Hon. Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, for 
President and Vice-President, and that ticket received the 
vote of the electoral college of Virginia. 

After Mr. Lincoln was elected, although he had not been 
his choice, he advocated acquiescence in the decision of 
the country, and deprecated any and every other course. 
And he was anxious, that every just pretext for refusing 
acquiescence on the part of the South should be removed 
by the Northern States ; and, in his correspondence with 
influential Northern men, he urged the repeal of all uncon- 
stitutional and unfriendly legislation which was found upon 
the statute-books of some of the Northern States. 

Among other efforts of this kind, he addressed a letter 
to the Hon. A. G. Curtin, who had just been elected by 
the Republican Party Governor of Pennsylvania. Mr. 
Curtin, when a youth, had pursued his studies under Mr. 
Kirkpatrick, at the Milton Academy, and had been a fre- 
quent hearer of Mr. Junkin, then the pastor at that place. 
The letter was entitled, — 

"a voice from a pennsylvanian in the heart of 

Virginia." 

After some kindly allusions to their former acquaintance, 
and to the satisfaction he felt in seeing so many of the for- 
mer pupils of the academy which he had helped to found 
rising to eminence, and a tribute to the Hon. Andrew 
Gregg, the grandfather of Mr. Curtin, after whom he had 
been called, who had been the personal and political friend 
of Mr. Junkin's father, he expressed the hope and belief, 
that " the family blood had not degenerated in the third 



LETTER TO GOVERNOR CUR TIN. 



5 J 3 



generation," and that the Governor would "not turn a 
deaf ear to the voice of a son of Pennsylvania sounding 
out from the heart of Virginia." He then proceeds : 

"I feel constrained to address to you, to my beloved 
friends who still survive, and to all to whom these presents 
may come in my own, my beloved, my native Pennsyl- 
vania, an earnest and solemn appeal in regard to the perils 
of the times. 

"And first let me state my conviction, fully matured and 
perfectly settled, that, of all the products of human wisdom 
within the sphere of political philosophy, the Constitution 
of the United States is the most profound, the most tran- 
scendent. Indeed, sir, it having been for a quarter of a 
century my duty annually to expound this instrument to 
the senior classes in college, every time I repeat the lesson, 
new evidences of its amazing wisdom reveal themselves to 
my admiring mind. Such a system of checks and balances 
is found in no other human production. . . . There it 
stands, in its sublime grandeur, the Temple of Liberty, in 
which the nations may bow and worship that God whose 
truth hath made them free ! Now, who will win a disgrace- 
ful immortality, who will damn himself to eternal infamy, 
by applying the brand to this glorious structure ? Who ? 
Shall Pennsylvania apply the hellish torch, or fan the flame, 
and bury beneath the gray ashes of this temple the hopes 
of freedom for the world ? Shall the Keystone become a 
splitting wedge, to rive rather than to sustain its arched 
vault, and leave this glorious structure like Dagon's temple ? 
— a ruined monument of man's folly and inability to govern 
himself, — the jeer of despots all over the earth. Forbid it, 
proud old Commonwealth ! Forbid it, ye spirits that bled 
at Brandywine, at Paoli, at Germantown ! 

"Then bear with me, sir, whilst I point warningly to the 
first infraction of the Constitution, ... a brand that 
has long lain smouldering within the temple, and has re- 
cently been fanned to flame by the breath of fanaticism 
and faction." 

He then quotes and expounds Art. iv. sec. 2 of the 
Constitution in regard to the rendition of fugitives from 



5 1 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

justice and from labor, and constructs a strong argument 
in favor of the faithful and sacred observance of the cove- 
nant of the Constitution by each and all of the States ; 
and then makes a most earnest appeal to Governor Curtin, 
and the people of his native State, to prove faithful in this 
crisis of their country's history to her Constitution in all 
its stipulations, and not only to meet its requirements, but 
to wipe from the statute-books of the State any enactments 
which may seem to conflict with the national charter. 

He then exposes the unlawfulness of secession, and quotes 
from President Jackson the language, "Secession does not 
break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation. To 
say that any State may, at pleasure, secede from the Union, 
is to say that the United States is not a nation." And, 
having shown that secession by force is treason, he shows, 
that any other refusal to abide by the stipulations and the 
authority of the Constitution, is equally a blow at the na- 
tional unity. And having spoken eloquently of the mission 
of our great model Republic in guiding the nations of the 
earth in their efforts after regulated liberty, he beseeches 
the Governor and his fellow-citizens of Pennsylvania, by 
all the glorious memories of the past, and all the inspiring 
hopes of the future, to be loyal to the Constitution. 

The doctrines of this letter are precisely the same which 
the new President, Mr. Lincoln, laid down in his inaugural 
address, three months later, and which he pledged himself 
to carry out. And the writer of these lines never doubted, 
that Mr. Lincoln would have redeemed his pledge, had 
extreme measures not been resorted to by the Cotton 
States. 

This letter to Governor Curtin was dated "Lexington, 
December nth, i860." It was published in the Philadel- 
phia North American of the 18th of that month. It 
attracted much attention, and elicited from some of the 
best minds of the country decided expressions of approval. 



LETTER OF ELI K. PRICE. 5^ 

On the very day of its publication, the Hon. Eli K. Price, 
an eminent Jurist of Philadelphia, addressed a note to Dr. 
Junkin, of which the following are extracts : 

"Philadelphia, Dec. 18, i860. 

"Dear Sir, — I have read in this morning's North 
American your sound and eloquent letter to Mr. Curtin, 
and sincerely thank you for it. It sets forth most clearly 
what is our plain duty, and it is directed to the right per- 
son, the Governor-elect, and ought to shape one feature 
of his inaugural address. From him the legislature will 
more willingly take this policy than from any other man 
in the State ; and the power is now wholly with the 
Republicans of this State. 

" I write to you to say that you are right, notwithstand- 
ing C. G. (Charles Gibbons), and notwithstanding Story's 
opinion in Prigg's case, and right as since decided by the 
Supreme Court of the United States. This I pointed out, 
under my initials, in the next paper after C. G.'s of the 8th 
December. ' ' 

Then follow some citations of authorities in corrobora- 
tion of the views expressed by Dr. Junkin, and the note 
ends : 

"Pray write again to the Governor - elect before his 
inaugural. 

"With thanks, I am, etc., 

"Eli K. Price." 

As Mr. Price was a man of eminent legal learning, and 
was also in sympathy with the Republican party, his com- 
mendation of this "Voice of a Pennsylvanian from the 
heart of Virginia," ought to be deemed valuable, especially 
as it was a spontaneous utterance. 

After South Carolina had passed her ordinance of seces- 
sion, and State after State began to move in the same 
direction, a convention was called in Virginia to decide 
the question of her future relations to the American Union. 



5 l6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

To this Convention was chosen a very decided majority of 
avowed Union men. In the Valley the majorities were 
very large. Rockbridge, in which Dr. Junkin lived, voted 
for Union men by more than ten to one. His great grati- 
fication at this result is indicated by a paragraph which we 
extract from a letter to his son, the pastor of New Provi- 
dence church, dated February 6, 1861 : 

" What a tremendous defeat the secessionists have met 
in Rockbridge ! A little more than ten to one, — and in 
Old Virginia they will be in a decided minority. Nil 
desperandum, — the heavens do rule. We are wicked enough 
to deserve destruction ; but the Lord is long-suffering. 
The Brownsburg vote fills me with gratitude to God and 
the noble congregation of New Providence. The people 
claim to say something in regard to their own destiny." 

In the deliberations of the Convention, Dr. Junkin was 
intensely interested. There are on his files letters from 
members of the Convention breathing an intense spirit of 
Union, and showing that, in his correspondence with 
the writers, he had used all his influence and power of 
argument to encourage them to resist the secession move- 
ment. These letters show, that their writers had great 
respect for the opinions of Dr. Junkin upon the questions 
then agitating the public mind. They also disclose some 
parts of the more secret history of secession in Virginia. 
There were powerful influences exerted by parties outside 
of that Commonwealth, to goad and drag her into that 
infatuated movement — influences which were not suspected 
at the time by the people remote from Richmond. One 
writer from that city says : 

"We have great difficulties to contend with here. All 
the metropolitan press is against us, and the greatest money 
power is active against us. The negro-traders have an 
immense capital, and I have no doubt use it freely in 
buying up votes and presses, and paying agents to get up 
county secession meetings." 



RESOLVES TO LEAVE VIRGINLA. S1 y 

But it were needless to attempt, in such a work as this, 
the details of the process by which that noble old Com- 
monwealth was, contrary to the repeated vote of her people, 
and the better judgment of many of her best citizens, 
dragged into the list of seceded States. The Union majority 
in her Convention, under influences above alluded to, and 
under the combined force of sectional prejudice, the violence 
of ultra men, and the dread of being suspected of disloy- 
alty to the Southern cause, gradually dwindled, until the 
secession party gained the ascendency, and the fatal step 
was taken which made her fair fields the theatre of 

" The bloodiest picture of the book of time." 

Against this dire result the subject of this memoir exerted 
all the influence he could put forth ; but it proved in vain ; 
and events hastened on which constrained him, either to 
sacrifice his conscientious convictions and self-respect by 
succumbing to the popular tide, to jeopard his personal 
safety, or to withdraw from the State and from the field of 
labor in which he had spent so many peaceful, useful, happy 
years. He decided to depart. 

No one can estimate the sacrifice made by Dr. Junkin 
in executing this decision without knowing the man, and 
what he was forced to leave behind. He had been happy 
and useful in that field of labor for nearly thirteen years. 
The society of Lexington was highly intelligent and genial. 
The roots of his family tree, as we have seen, had struck 
deep and spread wide in Virginia soil. Three of his chil- 
dren, with their interesting families, were left behind him, 
— his two sons, being pastors of important churches, and 
married into Southern families, and his daughter, the wife 
of a Professor in the Virginia Military Institute. In the 
same institution, too, was Jackson, still dear as a son. At 
Lexington cemetery he had " purchased his cave of Mach- 
pelah, and buried his dead out of his sight. There he 
44 



5 i8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

had made the sacred deposit, first, of one who had so- 
journed by his side for almost thirty-five years ; then of 
his second daughter, Mrs. Jackson ; then of a noble and 
beloved son-in-law ; then of the lovely boy who soon fol- 
lowed his father to the grave ; and there he had reserved a 
burial-plot for himself." In Lexington, — beautiful, pic- 
turesque, and healthful, — near to the ashes of his dead, and 
surrounded by so many surviving dear ones, he had hoped 
to spend the evening of his days. 

There, too, were his farm, his library, and other property. 
His salary was ample and satisfactory ; and he was sur- 
rounded by all the appliances which might smooth and 
comfort his later years. 

But he left- it all, in his seventy-first year, for love of his 
country, her Constitution and her flag, and returned to his 
native Pennsylvania. It was a crushing trial, and a heavy 
sacrifice ; and all the more so to a heart like his. Of all 
the refugees from the insurgent section, perhaps none were 
more distinguished, and none adhered to principle at 
greater cost. 

We will give the story in his own naive style, as published 
in the Presbyterian Standard, a paper ably edited by the 
Rev. Alfred Nevin, D.D., in Philadelphia. It was copied 
into nearly all the newspapers in the North, and was 
printed also in his book entitled "Political Fallacies:" 

"exodus of dr. junkin. 

" Mr. Editor, — The following is no Parthian arrow, but 
a simple history, designed to correct misapprehension and 
let my friends in Virginia and Pennsylvania know the truth 
in reference to my exodus from the former to the latter. 

" In the month of February last, I took up the Consti- 
tution of the United States for exposition to the Senior 
Class in Washington College, Virginia, of which I was 
then president, using Sheppard's excellent little work as a 
text-book. This was an anticipation of some two months, 
in accordance with the desires of the class and my own 



EXPOSITION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 



519 



convictions of duty, in reference to the dangerous miscon- 
structions of that highest production of human genius. I 
wished, by a fair and honest exposition, to convince my 
young friends that Union preceded Independence, and even 
the Articles of Confederation — much more the present Con- 
stitution ; that neither the Continental Congress nor the 
Articles of Confederation created and constituted a Gov- 
ernment : they had neither supreme, legislative, judicial, 
nor executive powers. The Congress was simply a grand 
Committee of the States, exercising many powers of sov- 
ereignty, but by no means all that belong to national sov- 
ereignty. In these lectures I dealt largely with the archives 
published by United States authority, reading from them 
to sustain my positions, and especially from the minutes 
of the Convention that formed the Constitution, passing 
through the entire volume, and demonstrating the fact of 
union as the leading principle — the polar star recognized 
by these wise men of the west, from the very first meeting 
in this city in September, 1774, and again in May, 1775. 
I showed that they felt themselves a unit — they recorded 
themselves a unit : as the United Colonies they appointed 
and commissioned George Washington as Commander-in- 
chief, in whose commission the phrase ' United Colonies' 
occurs three several times. My object, in these extended 
preparatory discussions, was to rivet the conviction in the 
minds of these dear young men, that union was always the 
master-thought in the minds of American patriots ; that 
union was the basis of all their actions ; that without union 
there could be no freedom, no national government, no in- 
dependence. From this position, it follows irrefragably, that 
there never existed a State sovereignty ; the supreme power 
is in the States united : no State ever declared itself an 
independent nation — none was ever recognized by any 
power on earth as an independent sovereignty ; the doc- 
trine of State rights, or State sovereignty, outside of the 
limits of State constitutions and the lines of demarcation 
fixed in the United States Constitution, is necessarily sub- 
versive of the national government, as General Jackson 
proved in his proclamation to the people of South Carolina, 
and from this follows the doctrine which he affirmed, that 
'disunion by armed force is treason.' The pseudo right 
of secession is a national wrong. 



5 2o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

"But in the progress of these discussions I observed a 
growing restiveness among the students, heard myself called 
a 'Pennsylvania Abolitionist,' and saw written on the 
column opposite my recitation-room door ' Lincoln Junkin.' 

"About the close of March, a Palmetto flag was placed 
on the centre building of the college, surmounting the 
wooden statue of Washington. ... In this process, 
led on by a Georgia student, the copper lightning-rod was 
bent, and subsequently broken off. For a student to go 
out on the roof has always been an offence, punished by 
demerit. This flag I ordered the servants to take down 
and bring to me. I was asked what I would do with it, 
and replied, 'Burn it after evening prayer.' But whilst I 
was at dinner, they procured a ladder, climbed into the 
window of my lecture-room, and took the flag away. 

"About a week after, it was again erected. I immedi- 
ately ordered the servants to take it down, and at an hour 
when all except the Freshmen were at their recitations ; 
these stood about as spectators, and asked what I was going 
to do with it. I answered, ' I'll show you.' I ordered the 
servants to hold the butt of the flag-pole firmly, and throw 
the top over from the chapel roof, which is a story lower 
than the centre building. When the flag came within 
reach, I stepped up and took some matches out of my 
pocket, set it on fire, and, when it blazed up, told the ser- 
vants to throw the pole out from the building, and whilst 
it flamed up, I said, ' So perish all efforts to dissolve this 
glorious Union /'* 

* " It is worthy of special notice here, that the young men who were chiefly 
active in the erecting of these flags perished on July 21, 1861, in the first 
battle of Bull Run. Two of them were killed by one cannon-shot, and a 
third (and he the leader) perished from excessive over-exertion in carrying 
his wounded companion three miles to the railroad car. This companion 
breathed his last just as they were lifting him on the car. And thus, to a 
melancholy and fearful extent, has the malediction prophetic been accom- 
plished. I am to this day — Dec. 9, 1862 — but very imperfectly informed 
on the subject, by reason of the rebellion cutting off all intercourse be- 
tween me and my two sons and daughter in Rockbridge ; but, from all I 
have heard, I am painfully impressed with the belief that more than fifty 
per cent, of all those misguided youth who were active in rebelling against 
me have paid the forfeit of their folly by the sacrifice of their lives. This 
is cause of unfeigned sorrow ; for a very large proportion of them were 
youth of remarkable promise for talents, diligence in study, purity of moral 
and religious character; who, but for these bloody fallacies, would have 
lived long and adorned the higher walks of professional life. 



THE DISUNION FIAG. 



521 



" On the 15th of April, my lecture-room door was much 
injured by attempts to break it open with a strong iron 
bar. The library door they succeeded in forcing open. 
The object was to procure the jointed ladder, which the 
servants had put behind the amphitheatre for safe keeping. 
(A door opens between the library-room and my lecture- 
room.) On the morning of the 17th, I saw a disunion 
flag surmounting the statue of Washington and the light- 
ning-rod. After prayer I detained the members of the 
Faculty, and waved my hand to the students to retire. I 
stated to my colleagues that this thing must be stopped, 
etc. One of them said he had just received a petition on 
the subject, signed by most of the students. I asked him 
to read it. The substance (I have not a copy) of it was, 
that the flag which they had erected' might be permitted 
to remain. I stated to the Faculty that it had been placed 
there in violation of law, and in contemptuous resistance 
to my express order, and, of course, if they would grant 
the prayer of the petition, my course of duty was clear 
and plain — I could not be coerced, but would instantly 
secede ; and left them to deliberate, and let me know their 
decision. 

"At eleven o'clock, the usual hour, the Junior class came 
into my room. I asked whether the flag was on the top 
of the College, and received an affirmative answer. ' Then, 
gentlemen,' said I, 'I am under the necessity of assuring 
you that I cannot submit to this kind of coercion,' and 
dismissed them. One rushed toward the door, shouting, 
'Thank God for that! thank God for that!'* and yelled 
his utmost, in which he was joined by a few others. 

"At twelve o'clock, when the Seniors came in, I read to 
them the substance of what I had said to the Juniors, and 
which, meanwhile, to be sure of the identical words, I had 
written down as follows : 

" ' Is the flag still on the top of the College?' 

"Answer, 'Yes.' 
. " 'Well, then, gentlemen, as you put it there in express 
opposition to my order, I am under the necessity of telling 
you that I have never been ridden over rough-shod in that 
style, and I never will be ; therefore, I never will hear a 

* " Killed at Bull Run, as I learned shortly after from a Richmond paper. 
44* 



5 22 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

recitation or deliver a lecture under a rebel flag. The class 
is dismissed. 

"'April 17, 1861.' 

"They rose and withdrew in the most gentlemanly 
and respectful manner, with every appearance of sincere 
regret. 

"In the evening of the same day, I received from my 
colleagues a paper, of which the following is a copy, viz.: 

" ' W. College, April 17, 1861. 

" '■Action of the Faculty in relation to the Flag on the College 
Buildings. 

" ' Whereas, The students, in reference to the tidings that 
the Virginia Convention are about to adopt an ordinance 
of secession, have hoisted a Southern flag upon the college 
building, and have made a respectful request of the Faculty 
that they would permit it to remain ; and whereas, the 
Faculty have assurance that this act has not taken place in 
any desire to violate college laws, or offer indignity to any 
member of the Faculty — -an assurance given by the students 
themselves to a member of the Faculty, and confirmed by 
the fact that they promptly took down, at the request of 
the Faculty, a similar flag, erected on a former occasion ; 
and whereas, Dr. Junkin regards this act as a wilful viola- 
tion of law and a personal indignity, and requires the 
Faculty to have it removed at once, on penalty of his 
resignation — an alternative which the Faculty think that 
Dr. Junkin has no right to impose, and which we cannot 
allow to influence our action in the premises, although we 
are fully determined to sustain the president, or any indi- 
vidual member of our body, in the maintenance of disci- 
pline ; and whereas, the sole object of the Faculty is to 
allay excitement, and insure good order and attention to 
study in college, in this time of civil disturbance, believ- 
ing, as we do, that these ends will be best promoted by not 
requiring the immediate removal of the flag ; therefore, 

" 'Resolved, That the flag be permitted to remain, at the 
discretion of the Faculty. 

" ' Copied from the minutes, and communicated to Dr. 
Junkin by order of the Faculty. 

"'J. L. Campbell, Clerk? 



MEETING OF THE TRUSTEES. 



523 



"There is but one point in which there is positive in- 
accuracy in the above. It is in regard to the flag said to 
have been taken down at the request of the Faculty. 

"The flag there referred to was not 'a similar flag' (as 
I was afterward informed, for I never saw it, and knew not 
of its erection until after it was taken down) ; it was a red 
flag, and it was not erected on the centre building, but on 
the building in which my lecture-room was. It was there- 
fore entirely different in its significance. And it was not 
taken down at the request of the Faculty, for the Faculty, 
as such, knew nothing about it ; it was taken down at the 
remonstrance, as I understood, of Professor White, for 
which interposition I felt thankful.* After what had already 
transpired, neither I, nor the public, could be at any loss 
to know what was meant by erecting a red flag, not on the 
centre building over the statue of Washington, as had been 
the others, but over my lecture-room. 

"On the next day, I called a meeting of the Trustees 
at 2^ p.m., the earliest hour practicable, on account of the 
meeting of the Presbytery of Lexington, and of the Supe- 
rior Court. In urging the Trustees individually to attend, 
I assured them it would take but a few minutes, for my 
resignation would be peremptory and absolute, and leave 
no room for discussion. I mention this circumstance, in 
order to counteract the gross misrepresentations which I 
have been told have found their way into some of the 
Richmond papers, but especially the Dispatch. 

"The Trustees met accordingly, and the Board was 
opened with prayer, as usual, and my resignation was pre- 
sented, as follows : 



* " The lovely youth who took down this red flag from over my lecture- 
room, perished at the second battle of Bull Run, on the 28th of August, 
1862, aged about eighteen years. He was an ardent Union man- — a devoted 
student, pure-minded as the blood of sprinkling ever cleanses sinners here 
below. A nobler boy never took seat before me in class, during the thirty- 
one years of my presidency in colleges. But this accursed rebellion crushes 
into its ranks the hoary head and the beardless boy, and drags them on to 
the slaughter. His brother, a former graduate, lost an arm in the same 
fight, and two others of my dearly beloved young friends, graduates of two 
years' standing, the pride of their parents, and ornaments to society, fell 
likewise on the same bloody field. Oh, ye conspirators against our glorious 
Union and the peace of the world, look at the. slaughter you have brought 
about, and think of the dread tribunal of Eternal Justice ! 



5 2 4 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

" ' Washington College, April 18, a.d. 1861. 
11 'To the Board of Trustees of Washington College. 

" ' Gentlemen, — I hereby resign the office to which you 
called me more than twelve years ago. 
" ' Very respectfully, 

" ' Your humble servant, 

" 'Geo. Junkin, President.' 

"Dr. McFarland took the chair, made a few kind re- 
marks j others were made — especially by Lawyer Davidson, 
who was quite complimentary; the vote was passed, I 
shook hands with all the members, many of whom, as well 
as myself, were overpowered with tender emotions. 

"Thus, within twenty hours from the time I was in- 
formed that my colleagues had determined to permit the 
secession flag to wave over the head of Washington, my 
connection with the College which he had so nobly en- 
dowed ceased forever. 

" With pleasure I append the following, which shows 
truly, that no personal ill feeling has ever existed toward 
me on the part of my late colleagues, as I doubt not they 
are perfectly aware, that my mind is equally free from every 
emotion inconsistent with our literary and Christian rela- 
tions. These difficulties have sprung from the false politi- 
cal maxims of Calhoun ism, which break down all the 
barriers of moral truth, and are rushing human society into 
the vortex of anarchy, and which must end in iron-handed 
despotism. 

" ' Washington College, April 18, 1861. 
" 'Rev. Geo. Junkin, D.D. 

" ' Dear Sir, — Although we, your recent colleagues, as 
members of the Faculty of Washington College, felt it to 
be our duty, under peculiar circumstances, to pursue a line 
of policy which you did not approve, and in consequence 
of which you have felt constrained to resign your connec- 
tion with the Institution, we wish to say, that we were 
actuated by no feelings of disrespect to you personally, or 
disregard of the high position you have filled in the Col- 
lege for so many years. And we desire now to express our 
high regard for your manly virtues as a Christian minister, 
and as a gentleman of distinguished talents and learning ; 
and to assure you of our entire confidence in your integ- 



THE EXODUS. 



525 



rity, of our sincere friendly regards for yourself and family, 
and our earnest prayer, that the twilight of your life may 
be its brightest and happiest period. 

" With much esteem, we are, very sincerely, 
"Your friends, 

" ' J. L. Campbell, 
" ' A. L. Nelson, 
" 'James J. White, 
"<C. J. Harris.' 

" Next day after these transactions I set to work in wind- 
ing up my business, selling my property, paying my debts, 
etc., and, as the ways of public conveyance were then 
blocked, I purchased a carriage, drove my own horses three 
hundred and fifty miles to Oxford, Chester County, and 
came in on the cars from that place yesterday morning. 

" ' The Lord shall keep thy soul ; he shall 
Preserve thee from all ill : 
Henceforth thy going out and in 
God keep forever will.' 

" Geo. Junkin. 
" Philadelphia, May 18, 1861." 

No discourtesy, much less violence, was offered to Dr. 
Junkin, after his resignation and previous to his exodus ; 
but he foresaw, that it would be impracticable for him to 
reside in a Southern community with his intense sentiment 
of loyalty to the Union. 

"I saw plainly," said he, in his introduction to the 
" Political Fallacies," " that if I remained, absolute silence, 
or a voice in favor of secession, must be the price of my 
personal safety. This price was too great for me to pay. 
It would bankrupt my self-respect and pollute my con- 
science. The only alternative was flight. So, leaving all, 
... I crossed the Potomac at Williamsport, after dark, on 
the 9th of May, 1861, having driven the last thirty-five 
miles from Winchester without stopping to feed my 
horses." 

The haste indicated by this drive from Winchester, was 
not prompted by any dread of molestation from the South- 
ern troops; for Dr. Junkin had with him a "pass" from 



526 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Governor Letcher of Virginia, but found no occasion to 
exhibit it on the journey ; and although Harper's Ferry 
had been taken, and troops were in motion throughout 
Virginia, there was as yet no exasperation of feeling, and 
had been no bloodshed. Dr. Junkin was accompanied in 
this hegira by his younger daughter, the widow of Professor 
Fishburn, and also by his niece, the daughter of the author 
of this book, who happened to be on a visit to Lexington at 
the time the civil war broke out. No incidents other than 
the usual toil and perils of travel occurred. His route 
was via Hagerstown, Chambersburg, Carlisle, and Harris- 
burg, past the place of his birth, and through the scenes 
familiar to his boyhood. The refugees halted a short 
time in Chambersburg, where they met kind friends. On 
the 13th of May he stopped at the house in which he had 
been born nearly seventy-one years before ; and, as stated 
in his own narrative, proceeded to Oxford, where some 
relatives reside, and thence to his son's residence in 
Philadelphia. There he found a home, of the pleasantness 
of which he was fond to speak to his intimate friends, and 
in which he was cherished with veneration and affection 
until the moment of his departure to his home in the 
heavens. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Residence in Philadelphia — Abundant Labors — In the Camp — Among 
Soldiers — Colporteur — Sabbath Question — " Sabbatismos" — Benevolent 
Institutions — Preaching — Private Studies — Treatise on Sanctification — 
Treatise on Tabernacle — -Commentary on " Hebrews" — Death — Estimate 
of Character — Intellect and Work — Piety — Prayerfulness — General As- 
sembly of 1861 — Spring Resolutions — " Political Fallacies." 

ALTHOUGH constrained to abandon the field of labor 
in which he had spent so many happy and useful 
years, Dr. Junkin could not, did not, rest. With him 
life was labor, and labor was necessary to a happy life. 
Probably no years of his earthly pilgrimage were more 
diligently and usefully occupied, than those which inter- 
vened between his exodus from Virginia and the period of 
his death. No man of his generation more fully observed 
the Scripture injunction that forms the motto of the title- 
page of this volume, — " Be not slothful in business, fervent 
in spirit, serving the Lord." 

The reader of this book must have observed that, in 
speaking of the man whose life and labors it commemorates, 
the writer has stated facts, and has rarely indulged in epi- 
thets ; and he feels it to be a privilege to permit others 
to characterize the man whom he so tenderly loved. 
Perhaps no language which the author could employ would 
so concisely, yet truthfully, portray the labors of the 
last years of Dr. Junkin, as the following extracts from the 
sermon already quoted. Dr. Knox says : 

(527) 



5 28 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

"Dr. Junk in was in his seventy-first year when he re- 
turned to Philadelphia. His residence, thenceforth, till his 
days on earth were ended, was in the family of his son, in 
which he received the honor, the veneration, the love, the 
attention which such a father might expect at the hands of 
such a son. The Lord will remember, and richly recom- 
pense him and his for their devotion to his venerable ser- 
vant. Freed thus from worldly cares, his eye not having 
grown dim, nor his natural force abated, Dr. Junkin was 
enabled to fill up his remaining years with deeds of mercy 
and kindness. In the last seven years of his life he preached 
about seven hundred times. His activity during this period 
was simply amazing — almost past belief. While the civil 
contest raged, his zeal in the behalf of the soldiers in the 
field and the hospitals led him to unwearied efforts for their 
material, and especially their spiritual, benefit. As a Col- 
porteur of the Board of Publication, he visited encampments 
whenever they were within his reach, and distributed tracts 
and books, and preached the Word of Life. At Fort Dela- 
ware and Point Lookout he spent whole days, and even 
weeks, among the Southern prisoners ; and after the deci- 
sive battle of Gettysburg, he was among the earliest on 
that field of blood, seeking to relieve distress, and to direct 
the wounded and dying to Jesus, the all-sufficient Friend 
and Saviour of Men. These labors of love were rendered 
at large cost. Many of those who were associated in them 
with Dr. Junkin found them too much for their strength ; 
but the deprivations and exposures they involved he en- 
dured without any apparent personal damage. 

" I need not do more than mention his efforts during the 
recent agitation in this community of the Sabbath question. 
He did his utmost to maintain the quiet observance of 
God's holy day. In ecclesiastical assemblies and in public 
meetings his voice was heard pleading the strict interpreta- 
tion of the Divine Commandment. Throughout large por- 
tions of the State, as well as in the city, he preached the 
doctrine of Sabbath-sanctification, by a holy resting on 
that day from all secular employments and recreations. 
He visited the Legislature of the State, and besought its 
members to lay no profane hand on the Divine Institution. 
The newspaper press fairly teemed with the articles of 
' Theophilus,' which were afterwards reproduced in the 



COMMENTARY ON "HEBREWS: 



529 



volume 'Sabbatismos,' and by the untiring energies of its 
venerable author, sent far and wide to influence the public 
mind against consenting to any lowering of the standard 
of legislation in the matter of the first day of the week. 

" He also officiated with great punctuality and with deep 
interest in two of the institutions of benevolence in the 
city. In one of them the inmates had arranged his desk 
in anticipation of his service on the very day of his death. 
They were to hear his voice on earth no more. 

"These employments and engagements would seem to 
have been quite enough for one of such advanced years, 
but they were not enough for Dr. Junkin. As he had been 
all his life, so during this last period he was a diligent stu- 
dent, and especially of the Word of God. His Bible, in 
the languages in which it was originally written, was ever 
open before him, and was the subject of his most earnest 
and prayerful investigation. During these last years he 
wrote and published a treatise on Sanctification, a treatise 
on the Ancient Tabernacle of the Hebrews, explaining the 
evangelical meaning of all its parts, and other smaller 
works. And he has left behind him, every line written 
since his seventy-fifth year was completed, a Commentary 
on the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews, in seven hundred 
and fifty pages of large quarto manuscript, in not one word 
of which can be detected the slightest tremulousness or 
other sign of failing age. 

"Nor have I yet exhausted the catalogue of the things 
he did during the time of his so-called retirement from 
public life. There was not a subject of current interest in 
Church or State on which he did not express himself, and 
always with vigor and clearness, in the public press. The 
end of this life of work was, however, at hand. The Mas- 
ter whom he served so long and well saw that the time had 
come for him to rest. Dr. Junkin throughout his life 
feared the pains of death. Of this he often spoke and 
wrote to those most familiar with him. God was most gra- 
cious to him in this regard. He was taken ill on Monday, 
on Tuesday was so much relieved that there was little ap- 
prehension concerning him, and on Wednesday, with no 
apparent aggravation of his symptoms, so suddenly, that 
there was scarcely time to intimate to him that he was 
dying, and for him to murmur the words, ' Saviour/ 

45 



53 o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

' Heaven,' he fell asleep, and was with Christ, which is 
far better. So closed his grand, his heroic life. ' He 
walked with God, and was not, for God took him.' 

"This sketch of the life of Dr. Junkin, though exceed- 
ingly incomplete, shows him to have been a great and a 
good man. In the well-chosen words of Dr. Breed, ' The 
mind of Dr. Junkin well harmonized with the material 
home in which it lodged — massive, compact, and strong. 
To say that he was a man of talents — of talents of a very 
high order — is to say the truth ; but only a part of the truth. 
He was a man of genius — with all the force, fire, and origi- 
nality of true genius. ' I would not represent him a universal 
scholar, for this were to say that he was superficial, which 
is precisely what he was not. His knowledge, however, 
was very extensive. A most diligent and patient student 
during his entire life, he did not fail to make important 
attainments in nearly every branch of science. But his 
chosen subjects of study were Theology, and the philoso- 
phies most closely allied to this science of sciences. On 
these great subjects he was a profoundly learned man. To 
use again the language of Dr. Breed, ' It has not been our 
lot to come into intimate contact with another man who 
had possessed himself of, and thoroughly thought out and 
mastered, so many of the leading topics of educational, 
mental, and moral science, and political economy, and of 
theology. These topics, stripped of irrelevant surround- 
ings, were laid away, like specimens in a museum, upon 
the shelves of a capacious and wonderfully faithful memory ; 
and there always were within reach, to be summoned forth 
at will for use, whether in conversation, debate, or literary 
composition.' Nor was his learning a dry accumulation of 
knowledge. It was only the fuel which supplied the flame 
of his genius. In this lay the secret of Dr. Junkin's power 
in the pulpit, in the arena of debate, and in the lecture- 
room. He was denied the voice of an orator, or his fame 
in this respect would have been well-nigh unsurpassed. 
Notwithstanding this great disadvantage, the vigor of his 
thought, the fulness of his knowledge, his burning words, 
his touching pathos, and his brilliant imagery, and the 
blood-earnestness with which he spoke, often overcame all 
obstacles, and held his hearers spell-bound. In debate his 
pre-eminence was confessed. I have heard that the latp 



HIS CHARACTER. 



531 



Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller pronounced him the most irresist- 
ible man in public discussion whom he had known. The 
same thing is true of him as he appeared before his classes. 
He had a magnetic power over his students. He not only- 
instructed them, but transferred to them the enthusiasm of 
his own nature, and moulded their minds into form and 
fashion like to his own. Of this the most valuable evidence 
has been given since Dr. Junkin's death, by men of emi- 
nence in Church and State, who sat at his feet during their 
educational career. 

"And how can I tell of his heart, that generous, noble 
heart, which, alas ! for those who loved and cherished him 
— for every cause of humanity- — for the Church of Christ — ■ 
beats no more ? A man of greater magnanimity, of truer, 
deeper, tenderer affections, I do not believe ever lived. 
Here I dare not trust myself. I have been overwhelmed 
by the outflow of the greatness of his love. How much 
more others ! and I cannot safely attempt to speak of that 
which I know is incapable of expression. 

" But, after all, Dr. Junkin's greatness was in his good- 
ness. He was an humble follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Like his Master, he was among his fellow-men as one that 
served. Great things he never sought for himself. He 
was desirous only of knowing what the Lord would have 
him to do, and to do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not 
unto man ; ' knowing that of the Lord he should receive 
the reward of the inheritance.' His humility was wonder- 
ful. I do not think I ever saw it equalled ; I am sure I 
never saw it surpassed. He asked nothing for himself, and 
received whatever was given to him, not as of reward, but 
as of pure, unmerited grace. He confessed himself to be 
an unprofitable servant. I need hardly say he was a man 
of prayer. He dwelt in the secret place of the Most High. 
He loved his closet. He knew well the path, and trod it 
constantly, to the Holy of Holies. And in all places where 
prayer was made he delighted to be. The noontide hour 
found him as often, probably more often, in the prayer- 
meeting than any other person. From the ministers' meet- 
ing for prayer he was never absent. During the week ap- 
pointed in the beginning of the year to supplicate for the 
conversion of the world, he was always to be seen and 
heard in the services, and if the interest excited led to the 



53 2 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KEY. 

continuance of them, he continued to attend. Too many 
appointments of this kind could not be made for him. 
His necessary food he would forego rather than be away. 
He was a man of God — full of faith and of the Holy 
Ghost — and gave himself continually to prayer and the 
ministry of the Word. 

"The services of such a man, protracted through so long 
a life, eternity alone can tell ! Nearly five thousand times 
he preached the gospel in the regular ministrations of the 
sanctuary. His other ministrations were also very numer- 
ous. Who can measure the influence which he has exerted 
through these labors? Probably as many as a thousand 
young men passed through the whole or a part of their col- 
lege life under his guidance and instruction. There are 
students of his in nearly every State of our Union, and in 
nearly every position of honor and usefulness. In Japan, 
in China, in India, in the Islands of the sea, there are mis- 
sionaries of Christ, in whose hearts the name of Dr. Jun- 
kin wakens a thrill of grateful love, as that of the man to 
whom, under God, they are indebted for whatever they 
have been enabled to do for the coming of the Kingdom 
of Christ in all the world. 

" Time fails me, and ability fails me, to tell of his heroic 
services in the behalf of the pure faith of the gospel, of 
his patriotic zeal, of his abundant labors in the cause of 
temperance, and every other work of reform, — performed 
with a spirit as brave as was that of Luther or Knox, — of 
his publications, by which so many have been enlightened 
and instructed, and by which he, being dead, shall continue 
to speak to the generations to come." 

A brief detail of facts will vindicate the compact, yet 
eloquent, general statements contained in the foregoing 
extract, and illustrate Dr. Knox's words, "His activity 
during this period was simply amazing — almost past belief." 

Shortly after the arrival of Dr. Junkin in Philadelphia, 
the General Assembly of 1861 convened in that city. The 
streets resounded with the rattle of drums, the tramp of 
soldiery, and the noise of military preparation. The North 
was rushing to the defence of the border and the capital, 
against the threatened invasion of the Confederate forces. 



SPRING RESOLUTIONS. 



533 



The deliberations of the Assembly were literally drowned 
at times by martial sounds, and, of course, the members of 
that body shared in the enthusiasm and excitement of the 
hour. 

Dr. Junkin was not a member of this Assembly, but he 
felt an intense interest in the extended discussions occa- 
sioned by the celebrated "Spring Resolutions," and was 
much engaged in conversing with members of the body 
upon the questions involved in that now historical paper. 
It need scarcely be said that he was in favor of the resolu- 
tions ; and after the Assembly adjourned, and the discus- 
sion of the action of the Assembly, in regard to the state' 
of the country, passed into the public press, he employed 
his vigorous pen in defending that action. This he did, 
both in the columns of the newspapers and in a volume 
which he began to write shortly after his exodus, and which 
he published some months afterwards. This volume is en- 
titled " Political Fallacies : an examination of the 

FALSE ASSUMPTIONS, AND REFUTATION OF THE SOPHISTICAL 
REASONINGS, WHICH HAVE BROUGHT ON THIS CIVIL WAR." 

The book was widely read, and did much good in refuting 
the Calhoun doctrines of secession, and unfolding the true 
principles of our Constitution. He demonstrates historic- 
ally, and by an inspection of the Constitution itself, that 
such a thing as national sovereignty belonging to a State of 
this Union is a mischievous absurdity. The book con- 
tains the same doctrines in regard to our Union which he 
had always taught, and in which many of his fellow-citizens 
of Virginia had agreed with him, before the frenzy of sec- 
tional jealousy had become so rife. The volume is a mine 
of political wisdom, stated in such simple style, and with 
such apposite illustration, as to make it comprehensible by 
the masses. 

And yet the book has its defects. Written as it was 
under the excitement incident to the civil war, currente 
45* 



534 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNK IN. 

calamo, and with a feeling of intense indignation against 
doctrines which he believed to be the cause of the carnage 
and horror which were desolating his country, there is a 
tone of impetuosity in some passages which, whilst it suited 
the times, would seem discordant in a period of profound 
peace. Nor does he always distinguish with his accustomed 
acumen between rights which may justly be claimed by the 
States, and those which were unjustly assumed by the seces- 
sionists, and which never were rights, but wrongs. 

In his zeal against the foolish claim of absolute national 
sovereignty by a State of the Union, he, in a few instances, 
seems to ignore the fact, that over certain things the Con- 
stitution guarantees to the States supreme control — i.e. sov- 
ereignty ; but not such a supreme control as would permit 
resistance to the National Government or secession from 
the Union. And yet it is well known by those who knew 
Dr. Junkin's opinions, that he was a thorough Jeffersonian 
in the interpretation of the Constitution of the United 
States, and was profoundly convinced, that the centrifugal 
forces of our system are as important to union and liberty 
as the centripetal. He dreaded consolidation only less 
than secession. 

His defence of the Spring Resolutions in this book, and 
his answer to the animadversions of the Biblical Repertory 
upon them, were not satisfactory to all his readers. Grant- 
ing his assumption, that those resolutions did not decide for 
the members of the Presbyterian Church in the Southern 
States the question of civil allegiance, and his argument is 
conclusive. But that is the very thing in dispute. Dr. 
Hodge, and many with him, verily thought the Assembly 
did decide that political question, which an ecclesiastical 
court had no right, by our Standards, to do. If their in- 
terpretation of Dr. Spring's paper is correct (and many 
think it is), then there was no such inconsistency as Dr. 
Junkin charged upon Dr. Hodge, in expressing a willing- 



POLITICAL FALLACLES. 



535 



ness to vote for such a paper in the Synod of New Jersey, 
but not in the General Assembly ; for nobody in New Jer- 
sey denied the authority of the United States as a govern- 
ment de facto over New Jersey, whilst many denied it in 
the Southern country. It might be right to enjoin Chris- 
tian citizens to be loyal to an acknowledged government 
which is able to protect them ; whilst it might not be right 
to extend the same injunction to Christians living in an 
insurrectionary district where a government de facto exists 
so strong as to banish every other flag but its own. It 
might be inexpedient for our General Assembly to decide 
that the Christians in China ought to adhere to and support 
the ancient dynasty, even if they lived in the districts in 
which the Chinese rebellion had excluded the flag of the 
empire. Such a decision might destroy practically the 
catholicity of the church of Christ, and estop, in many 
portions of the world, her missionary work. Upon these 
questions good and patriotic men may differ in opinion. 
But, whether right or wrong upon this question, the " Po- 
litical Fallacies" has been acknowledged by the public 
to be a very valuable contribution to our ethico-political 
literature, replete with important truths and patriotic 
fervor. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

Visits to Native Place — To Harrisburg — To Susquehanna — Preachings — ■ 
Newport — Old Ironsides — Dr. Hopkins — Assembly of 1862 — Omnipo- 
tence of General Assembly— Labors in Canal Street — Patriotic Labors 
— Doctrines of the "Political Fallacies" — Secession and Consolidation 
— Prisoners his former Pupils — Gettysburg — Prof. Stoever's Letter — 
Death of " Stonewall" Jackson — His Creed and Course — Colonel Preston 
■ — The Two Commissions — Canal Street — Meeting of the Brothers — The 
Widows — The Magdalen — Temperance and Sabbath Labors — Sab- 
batismos— Hebrews — Opinions on Public Affairs — On Church Union 
— Last Labors — Illness — Death — Funeral. 

DURING the years immediately succeeding his return to 
Pennsylvania, Dr. Junkin made many visits to differ- 
ent parts of our country ; all of which he seemed greatly 
to enjoy, and in all of which he was greeted with that 
warm welcome which was due to a man whose labors and 
sacrifices in the cause of God and his country had been 
so remarkable. 

One of these visits he has described with some minute- 
ness in his Reminiscences, having dropped the chrono- 
logical order for the purpose : 

"Having for some months cherished a fond desire 
to visit the place of my birth, the Rev. Mr. Kopp, the 
Lutheran minister at New Kingston, Cumberland County, 
whose church building stands on the north side of the 
street, on the old Junkin farm, just s«uth of the ' Widow 
Junkin's tent,' was so kind as to make arrangements for me 
to preach there on the 71st anniversary of my birth. I 
arrived at his hospitable house on October 31st. Next 
day, November 1st, being the end of the 71st and the be- 
ginning of the 7 2d year of my sojourn in this beautiful 
though sin-stricken world, Mr. Kopp accompanied me to 
the old stone house in which I was born, now occupied by 

(536) 



VISIT TO NATIVE PI ACE. 



537 



Mr. Joseph Kanaga, son of the Joseph to whom my father 
sold it." 

He then proceeds to describe his survey of the house, 
the farm, the vicinity, and the various objects associated 
with his childhood's memories. The description is too 
minute to interest the general reader, but it gives an insight 
of the heart-workings of this man of strong mind and glow- 
ing affections, which perhaps nothing else that he has 
written could so effectively do. He seems to have gazed 
upon everything on the dear domain, with an eye and a 
memory that repeopled it with the loved and lost. Even 
"the slate rock on which I fell, when about five years old, 
receiving the wound that left this small cicatrix upon my 
brow," was noticed. The changes in the features of the 
locality are marked. "But seven of the old apple-trees 
planted in his childhood remain." "Two of the old wal- 
nut-trees in the meadows only survive." "I noticed the 
stump of the locust which my sister Eleanor had planted 
near the window of her chamber in 1804. . . . The 
garden which these hands often turned over, is still rich, 
but now rough, and all the trees of my acquaintance gone. 
The old weeping-willow, at the northeast corner, passed 
away — all gone." He and his friend walked to several of 
the neighboring farms familiar to his childhood, but rarely 
met any of the acquaintances of his youth : 

"- " I went on toward the old school-house where first I 
learned to read ; but there was no school-house there, not 
a fragment, not a stone. ... I wished to tread alone 
the very path my feet had trodden sixty-three years ago, 
but the grove was gone ; all, except the land, was changed. 
I could not find the trace. . . . Arrived at the vener- 
ated ground, a thousand thoughts rushed upon me. This 
is the very spot on which I was taught my earliest les- 
sons ; here, every Saturday, without fail, we answered the 
questions, 'What is the chief end of man?' etc. Here I 
talked with my old masters, Jamieson, Henderson, Car- 



538 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IX. 

uthers, and the rest. On this very spot I hit the ball 
against the gable ; just there I often struck the lever which 
sent the ball aloft in 'sky-ball;' down yonder we played 
'cat and ball;' just here I had the only pugilistic contest 
of my life — politics the cause — in my eighth year; over 
these fields, then covered with forest, we played ' fox-hunt ;' 
but where are all the Walkers, and the Irvines, and the 
Andersons, and the Junkins, and all the rest? Where? 
. . . Filled with such thoughts, I wended my way back, 
as nearly upon the old school-path as I could steer, to the 
old homestead, thence returned to Mr. Kopp's, and went 
with him to the church at 7 o'clock p.m., and preached 
from Matt. xi. 28-30. House full, and close and solemn 
attention. I pleaded for the conversion of some souls, as 
a memorial of my birthday. I doubt not that the Spirit 
of God was there, and the fruit will appear in eternity, — 
Comfort. . . . After sermon went to Mr. Kanaga's 
and slept in Sister Eleanor's room, — a very happy night, 
both sleeping and waking. Where will I be at the end of 
seventy-one years more? And then, how many of my 
childhood's and youth's companions will I find in that 
happy home? Oh, my God, seal the truths I have uttered 
this night upon the hearts of the children and grandchil- 
dren of my early friends ! 

"On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Dinsmore, pastor elect 
of Silver Spring Church, conveyed me to Mr. B. Bryson's. 
Here I found children and grandchildren of my early 
friends. Next day I preached at Silver Spring, from John 
xiv. 27, in the very house where first I had heard the gospel 
from the lips of Mr. Waugh and Mr. Linn. Went into the 
graveyard and found many old friends, and gazed upon the 
spot where lies the dust of my grandparents, my uncles and 
aunts, my dear sister Elizabeth and her child, and two of 
ray infant brothers. 

" Went from church to Hogestown* the guest of Mrs. 
S., formerly Margery L. There found poor ' Jack' L., one 
of my most intimate schoolfellows, a thoughtless boy, and 
still, and all through life, thoughtless on the subject of sal- 
vation. Had a long talk with him and others in his sister's 
room, then a long, serious, and tender talk with him alone, 
on the subject of his life, death, and future destiny. We 
both wept. He is waiting till God changes his heart, — sub- 



PREACHINGS. 



539 



stantial antinomianism. Closed our interview with solemn 
and tender prayer. He came out to hear me at night. 
My text, 'Cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground?' 
Upon the whole, I left him, hoping against hope, that my 
poor old schoolmate will be brought in before he dies. 
The Lord grant it for Jesus' sake. House crowded at the 
service to-night." 

He then describes a short visit to Harrisburg, and to his 
oldest son, a surgeon in the Union army, and then at 
Camp Cameron, and concludes the sketch of his visit as 
follows : 

"Thus have I been preserved and carried mercifully 
through one of the most delightful visits which I ever en- 
joyed. My happiness was of course of that sombre tinge 
which leaves the deepest impression ; and fondly do I hope 
that God will make it, to many, a blessing even more valu- 
able than it has been to myself." 

A few weeks after his return from his native place, he 
made a visit to the field of his former ministerial labors 
on the Susquehanna. The last days of November, and 
the first two weeks of December, were thus occupied. 
From the 28th of November to the 1st of December, 
he preached six times in Danville, and assisted at the 
dispensation of the Lord's Supper. Thence, he visited 
Milton, Turbot, White-Deer Valley, the fields of his former 
labor, taking sweet counsel with such of his former parish- 
ioners and friends as survived, and preaching the Word in 
those places. He preached eight times in these congrega- 
tions, and visited many of his former friends, receiving 
everywhere a warm and affectionate welcome. Among 
others whom he found surviving, and with whom he held 
sweet Christian fellowship, none stood higher in his regards 
than the venerable woman who, almost forty years before, 
had kept angel-like vigils beside that bed of sickness which, 
in a former chapter, we have described, — the mother of ex- 



54 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

Governor Pollock. " It was truly affecting," said the Gov- 
ernor, in making mention of the visit, " to see those aged 
people sitting closely side by side, for hours at a time, 
conversing quietly, and sometimes tearfully, about the 
past, the present, and the eternal future, weeping together 
over the memory of the departed yet dear ones whom they 
had both known and loved, talking of the scenes and the 
persons of the past and of their common hopes in regard 
to that heavenly home to which most of their loved ones 
had gone, and to which they both expected soon to 
follow. ' ' 

In churches of Philadelphia he often officiated, and in 
Pottsville, Port Carbon, and other places. It is surprising 
to learn, from his register, the frequency with which he 
preached the Word during this winter. On the 16th and 
the 23d of February, we find this record in the register : 
" 16th. Silent, by order of Dr. Darrach. 23d. Ditto." 
On May nth, 1862, he preached in Dr. Swift's church, 
Alleghany, and in Dr. Howard's, in Pittsburg; next Sabbath 
in the First Church, Columbus, the next in the Methodist 
church of that city, the next in the First Presbyterian 
Church, Oxford, Ohio, where he had formerly resided, and 
the same day in the chapel of Miami University. On the 
5 th of June, he made a patriotic address in the court-house 
at Madison, Indiana ; and on the 8th he preached twice 
in Indianapolis ; on the 14th, one sermon and an address in 
Valparaiso ; and on the next day, Sabbath, preached three 
times for the Rev. Dr. Logan, then the pastor of the church 
in that place. The next day he made a speech in the same 
city upon national affairs. On the next Lord's day, we 
find him in Mercer, Pennsylvania, where he preached twice. 
The same amount of labor was performed at New Wilming- 
ton on the next Sabbath. Three days after, he preached 
in the Methodist church, Mercer ; two days thereafter 
(July 4th), in the court-house in that town, he made a 



old ironsides: 



541 



speech to a large assembly, among whom were three sur- 
viving members of the company of " Mercer Blues," which 
his brother John had led to the Northwestern frontier in 
1 81 2. On this day half a century before, he had delivered 
to that same company his first public speech, at the time 
they volunteered for the war. 

This brief summary is given as a specimen of the manner 
in which this minister of Christ labored, week after week, 
to the end of his life. 

In April, 1862, he made a visit to his brother, then resi- 
dent at Newport, R. I., as chaplain of the United States 
Naval Academy, which Institution had been removed to 
that city from Annapolis shortly after the breaking out of 
hostilities. Dr. Junkin enjoyed this visit very much. The 
pure, bracing sea-air of Newport invigorated him, and the 
historical associations of that ancient city interested him 
very much. Whilst there, he officiated often, at his 
brother's request, and with much acceptance to the officers 
and cadets of the Academy, in the religious services of 
the Institution, both on ship and shore. He was much 
gratified with the opportunity of causing "the gospel's 
joyful sound" to echo through the wooden walls of " Old 
Ironsides" (_the frigate Constitution, then the school-ship), 
which had so often trembled beneath the cannon's roar, when 
the gallant Stewart and Hull trod her decks, and guided her 
to conquest amid the storm of battle. He preached, also, 
in the First and Second Baptist Churches, and in the 
First Congregational Church twice, then and still under the 
pastoral care of the lovely and accomplished Dr. Thayer, 
and once the pastoral charge of the celebrated Dr. Samuel 
Hopkins, whose peculiar views it had been the lot of Dr. 
Junkin to controvert in earlier life. 

Returning from this visit, he called at New York to renew 
fellowship with his life-long and beloved friends, Dr. Mc- 
Elroy, who was still, as he had been for more than thirty 
46 



5 42 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK' IX. 

years, the eloquent and able preacher and model pastor in 
the Scotch Presbyterian Church in that city, Dr. Phillips, 
the excellent and beloved pastor of the First Church, 
and Dr. Knox, the judicious and venerated pastor of the 
Collegiate Dutch Church. 

He had meanwhile become a member of the Mother 
Presbytery of Philadelphia, and that body chose him one 
of her commissioners to the General Assembly of 1862, 
which that year met in Columbus. His younger brother 
was also in attendance upon the Assembly, and they were 
both invited guests of that earnest patriot and efficient sup- 
porter of the Union, David Tod, then Governor of Ohio. 
His Excellency entertained them with a large hospitality, 
and took a deep interest in those discussions and acts of 
the Assembly relating to public affairs, and in which Dr. 
George Junkin bore so prominent a part. In this Assembly 
Dr. Junkin spoke oftener than had been his wont, and he 
seemed always to be listened to with that respect and in- 
terest, which his talents and his peculiar relations to the past 
and the present of his church and his country naturally 
inspired. 

The patriotic zeal which had exhibited itself in the 
Assembly of the previous year seemed to have become in- 
tensified in this ; and Dr. Junkin stood full abreast of his 
fellow-members in his readiness to do anything which an 
ecclesiastical court might lawfully do, in encouraging the 
civil authorities in maintaining the government and pre- 
serving the Union. At this Assembly, and in connection 
with questions relating to civil and ecclesiastical affairs in 
Kentucky and Missouri, issues arose, which, four years 
later, culminated in the exciting scenes and the doubtful 
doings of the Assembly at St. Louis, in regard to those 
that have been called the "Declaration and Testimony 
men. 1 ' 

Into these issues and the details of their results it is not 



OMNIPOTENCE OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



543 



necessary, in a biography of Dr. Junkin, to enter. All 
that pertains necessarily to his history is the statement, that 
he was with the majority of the Assembly in their patriotic 
deliverances, spoke earnestly and eloquently in favor of the 
paper introduced by Dr. Breckinridge, but at the same time 
deprecated and deplored all personal animosities growing 
out of the diversities of opinion concerning them, and 
was also steadfastly opposed to some of the principles 
asserted and the measures adopted by the Assemblies of 
1865 and 1866, in relation to these troubles. Whilst he 
went further than some of his brethren deemed ecclesias- 
tically lawful in deliverances favorable to the Union and to 
the suppression of armed resistance to the government, and 
whilst he disapproved of the course and the language of the 
" Declaration and Testimony men," yet he deprecated and 
resisted with his influence and his pen the measures adopted 
by the Assembly in regard to them. He saw no necessity 
for resorting to expedients of doubtful constitutionality, 
much less to expedients flagrantly unconstitutional, in 
order to reach with rapid and severe discipline these 
recusant brethren. He deplored the assumption by the 
General Assembly of powers not granted to that body 
in the constitution, powers which he verily believed were 
dangerous to the liberties of God's people, and destruc- 
tive of the beautiful and well-balanced Presbyterianism 
which our fathers had deduced from the Bible. He felt 
that the assumption by the Assembly of the powers of a 
court of original jurisdiction, in cases of discipline, was 
unconstitutional, and tended to the utter destruction of 
our system of appeals from a lower to a higher court. 
He abhorred the doctrine of the "omnipotence of the 
General Assembly," and in a series of vigorous articles, 
published in the North- Western Presbyterian, a paper ably 
edited at Chicago by the Rev. E. Erskine, D.D., and the 
Rev. D. McKinney, D.D., he showed the unconstitutionality 



544 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

and the dangerous tendency of this dogma, and besought 
his brethren to beware, lest, in their excited zeal for a good 
end, they should adopt doctrines and measures which were 
revolutionary and destructive. In his Presbytery also, 
and in his Synod, he raised his voice against this sacrifice 
of great and essential general principles to temporory expe- 
dients. Admitting the maxim, inter arma leges silent, as 
sometimes applicable and necessary in temporal govern- 
ments, he claimed that it is never necessary in govern- 
ments ecclesiastical. 

It is believed that his views of this matter are the views 
which prevail with the great mass of Presbyterians, especi- 
ally since the reunion. The Old School branch, before the 
reunion, had substantially receded from and repudiated 
positions taken in 1865 and 1866, and the New School 
branch stand committed, by all their deliverances, in all 
their separate history, against the high church doctrines of 
the " omnipotence of the General Assembly," — the right of 
the Assembly to assume original jurisdiction in cases of 
discipline, and the possession by the higher courts of all 
the powers of the inferior judicatories. This would be a 
consolidation of power more puissant than the Popedom, 
and more dangerous to the liberties of God's people. 
Against it Dr. Junkin left his latest, almost his dying, 
testimony; for, in some of the last letters traced by his 
pen, he charges his brother to resist it everywhere, and all 
the time. 

The summer of 1862 found the writer of these pages, by 
orders from the chief of his department, chaplain of the 
line-of-battle ship North Carolina, then the " receiving- 
ship" at New York. He had, in addition to his official 
duties, the supplying of the pulpit of the Canal Street Pres- 
byterian Church, being invited thereto by its Session. In 
the autumn of that year he was ordered to the steam frigate 
Colorado, then put in commission at Kittery Navy- Yard, in 



LABORS IN CANAL STREET. 



545 



the State of Maine, and ordered on blockade duty. At 
his suggestion, Dr. George Junkin was invited to take 
charge of the pulpit of Canal Street when the younger 
brother went to sea. He consented, and preached in Canal 
Street on the 8th of October. But previous engagements 
prevented him from entering fully upon this charge until 
the month of November. Meanwhile he made another 
visit to the West Branch of the Susquehanna, preaching 
and making addresses with great frequency. Williamsport, 
Muncy, and his favorite charge, White-Deer Valley, shared 
in these labors. In November he went to New York, 
and began his work in Canal Street ; he made his home 
with his brother's family, at 79 Sands Street, Brooklyn, 
and continued to labor with his accustomed assiduity until 
the battle of Gettysburg was fought, when he hastened to 
that scene of carnage, and toiled in arduous attendance 
upon the sick and wounded, and in constant preachings 
and ministrations in the general and smaller hospitals. 
He labored about ten months in Canal Street, and with 
great acceptance and usefulness. His memory is cherished 
anong that people with much reverence and affection. 

Whilst located in Brooklyn, and, indeed, from the com- 
mencement of hostilities between the insurgents and the 
United States Government, Dr. Junkin was as zealous for 
maintaining the government and preserving the Union as 
he had been in efforts to prevent the appeal to arms. He 
omitted no opportunity and no exertion, compatible with 
his profession as a minister of the gospel, to encourage his 
fellow-citizens to maintain the Constitution and the Union. 

Approving, as he did, the declaration of Congress, in 
regard to the objects of the war, viz., to maintain the 
authority of the government, and preserve the Union and 
the Constitution, he lent all his influence and employed his 
voice and his pen in helping forward the good work. His 
patriotism partook of the vigor of his mind and the inten- 
46* 



54 6 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

sity of his ardent affections. He had made sacrifices for 
the cause of the Union such as few other men were called 
to make, and he seemed willing to add the sacrifice of time, 
toil, substance, and all he had, rather than witness the dis- 
ruption of his country. 

He was repeatedly called upon to deliver addresses in 
vindication of the cause of the country, and generally re- 
sponded to such calls, sometimes travelling long distances 
to do it.* These speeches were marked by his usual vigor 
of thought and fervor of manner ; but, whilst he advocated 
the energetic defence of the government, he at the same 
time aimed to abate the exasperation of sectional hate. He 
did not believe that bitter hatred to the persons of the 
secessionists was a necessary or proper element of success 
in a war for the Union ; and, like Mr. Lincoln and the 
Congress, at the beginning of the war, he did not con- 
template or advocate anything beyond the preservation of 
the Union, and the restoration of the statum quo ante 
belht m. 

Early in the war, he prepared and published, through 
the house of Charles Scribner, of New York, a volume 
of 332 pages duodecimo, "Political Fallacies," already 
noticed. 

There is not space for quoting, upon these pages, any 
part of his admirable argument, and, as the book was 
widely circulated, it is the less necessary. We can only 
say that, in the judgment of at least his Northern readers, 

* As a specimen of these invitations, take the following telegram, dated 

" Bridgeport, Conn., April 4th, 1863. 
" To Rev. Dr. Geo. Junkin, 79 Sands Street, Brooklyn. 

" Come, if possible, to Bridgeport to-night — a short speech — and you can 
return before Sunday. Take the New York and New Haven cars. 

" F. W. Smith, Jr." 

He acceded to this invitation, as well as to similar ones from Somerville, 
Oxford, and other places. 



DOCTRINES OF "POLITICAL FALLACIES: 



547 



he demonstrated the "fallacies" of the secession doctrine 
— showed, historically and by an inspection of the Con- 
stitution itself, and from the recorded interpretations of its 
framers, that no colony or State of this Union ever pos- 
sessed an independent national sovereignty ; that the func- 
tions of absolute political sovereignty had never been 
allowed to, or claimed and exercised by, any State ; that 
national sovereignty, when it passed from the British crown 
at the Revolution, had passed to, and been exercised by, 
not the several States, but "the United States of America in 
Congress assembled." He proved that the United States 
was a nation, not a congeries of independent communities, 
transiently confederated; that the right of a State to'come 
into the Union and to go out at its own option, never had 
been conceded and had no place in our Federal Constitu- 
tion, and that the disintegrating doctrine of secession, as 
taught by the Calhoun school, was as inconsistent with 
every acknowledged principle of common law and national 
structure, as it was with the fundamental law of our country 
as written in the Constitution. Admitting a modified 
sovereignty over its own internal police as the inherent 
and guaranteed right of every State, and deprecating the 
assumption by the national government of any powers not 
constitutionally belonging to it, he showed that the right 
to withdraw at option from the national Union never per- 
tained to State sovereignty, and that the assertion of such 
a right was as preposterous as it was suicidal. He also 
demonstrated, that our admirable Constitution contained 
within itself a perfect system of checks and balances, by 
which, when normally worked, all the ends of a grand, 
free, and effective nationality could be attained, whilst, at 
the same time, the rights and interests of the smallest 
States, and the privilege of local self-government, could be 
secured. He demonstrated, that consolidation on the one 
hand, and the disintegration inevitably resulting from seces- 



54 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JVNKIN. 

sion on the other, would be alike destructive of our beautiful 
and massive continental system ; that the State govern- 
ments, working in their proper orbits, strengthened the 
nation, and that the national government, operating within 
the sphere prescribed in the Constitution, would prove 
mighty and beneficent for all national purposes, whilst it 
was the only guarantee against foreign invasion and wrong, 
and domestic strife of State with State. 

There is reason to believe that this book was instrumental 
of great good, in placing before many of the influential 
men of the country a distinct, lucid, and forceful exhibi- 
tion of the great issues of the war, so that thousands could 
more clearly understand what we were contending for. 

As was intimated by Dr. Knox, in his memorial dis- 
course, Dr. Junkin was one of the most prompt, faithful, 
and laborious of those ministers of Jesus who hastened to 
the fields of battle to assist in attendingupon the wounded, 
the dying, and the dead. Many have expressed their 
astonishment at the fact, that a man of his years could 
endure the exposure, and perform the amount of labor, 
through which he actually passed. In these toils he not 
unfrequently was called to minister to his former pupils, 
whom he found among the wounded and the prisoners 
from the Confederate armies. They invariably met him 
with affection, and received his attentions with gratitude. 
He was often moved to tears in witnessing the sufferings 
of Southern soldiers ; and whilst he strongly reprobated the 
cause in which they suffered, he commiserated their woes 
and did what he could to alleviate them. And even when 
he did not come in personal contact with them, he received 
letters from prisoners who knew him personally, asking 
for relief and counsel. And he always extended aid, to the 
limit of his means and opportunities. On his files are 
letters from Confederate prisoners, written from Fort Dela- 
ware, from Johnston's Island, from David's Island, from 



PROFESSOR STOE VSR'S LETTER. 



549 



Rhode Island Hospital, and other points, some of them 
his former pupils, others only acquaintances, asking, some 
for books, some for other aid, some seeking his intercession 
for their release, others thanking him for favors previously 
extended to them in their distress. 

Did our space permit, it would be interesting to insert 
some of these letters. One of them is from a former 
pupil, who was at the Theological Seminary when the war 
began, and left his books to take up arm§. It is dated 
after the surrender, and in it he entreats Dr. Junkin to 
intercede with the proper authorities to procure his early 
release from the condition of a prisoner of war, that he 
might return and resume his studies in order to enter 
upon his Master's work. The writer of the letter deplores 
the time already lost from the work to which he had 
devoted his life, and appears to long for an opportunity 
to redeem the time. Of course, as the young man had 
taken the oath of allegiance to the United States Govern- 
ment, Dr. Junkin did not hesitate to exert all the influence 
he could for his prompt release. 

In a letter addressed to George Junkin, Esq., by Martin 
L. Stoever, LL.D., Professor in Pennsylvania College, and 
dated Gettysburg, December 28th, 1868, one of those 
scenes, between Dr. Junkin and the Confederate prisoners, 
which illustrate their mutual feelings, is graphically de- 
scribed. We shall have occasion to quote other passages 
of this letter, but cite the following in this connection. 
Prof. S. was a native of Germantown, and, when a youth, 
had met Dr. Junkin when he was Principal of the Institu- 
tion there. Thirty years after separating at Germantown, 
they met in Arch Street, and the Professor was surprised 
to be promptly recognized and cordially greeted. He then 
proceeds : 

"I did not see him again until we met in Gettysburg, 
after the memorable battle which proved the turning-point 



550 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

in the history of the war. He was frequently at my house 
during the period he labored so faithfully in the service of 
Christian humanity. I was often struck with his power of 
endurance, the earnest and indefatigable efforts he put 
forth to relieve human suffering, and to minister to the 
spiritual welfare of the wounded and dying. We were 
often together in the hospital during the week and on the 
Lord's day, and I know how earnest and faithful he was in 
the good work, how his heart yearned to bring souls to 
Christ, to prepare the dying for the great change which so 
soon awaited them. 

" His manner, too, was peculiarly happy, especially when 
he came in contact with his erring brethren from the South. 
He seldom failed in conciliating them, and awakening their 
personal interest, always without the compromise of his 
loyalty or patriotism. His connection with ' Stonewall 
Jackson,' and a golden-headed cane which he carried, the 
gift of that General, were often made the occasion of 
introducing the subject of religion when he entered the 
tents of the prisoners. One Sabbath afternoon, when he 
consented to preach on the grounds of the consolidated 
hospital, I found perhaps a dozen of his former pupils in 
Washington College, whom I persuaded to attend the ser- 
vices in the chapel. Dr. J. delivered a very pungent dis- 
course ; the services were of a very solemn character. After 
they were concluded, these college young men all remained 
to take their old preceptor by the hand. Among the 
number was a Confederate chaplain ; and it was most 
touching to see the aged man of God throw his arms 
around the young man's neck and weep, exclaiming, ' I 
never thought you would be engaged in this work !' 

"As they gathered around him, apparently most glad to 
meet him again, he took from his pocket the old class- 
book, and commenced to call the roll, and rehearsed the 
history of each member, showing how all had suffered 
more or less in consequence of their resistance to the best 
government which God had ever given to men." 

Whilst Dr. Junkin was serving the Canal Street Church, 
and his brother was at sea, their correspondence was kept 
up, and an extract from a letter which passed between 
them may disclose something of their peculiar trials, and 



DEATH OF "STONEWALL" JACKSON. 55 x 

shed light upon the spirit by which they were animated 
in that dark period. Two months before the battle of 
Gettysburg, that of the three terrible days at Chancellorville 
had been fought, in which General Jackson was mortally 
wounded. The following are extracts from a letter written 
by the younger to the elder brother in reference to that 

event : 

" U. S. S. Frigate Colorado, May 18th, 1863, 
"off Mobile Bay, near Fort Morgan. 

" My dear Brother, — For the last half-hour there has 
been the severest struggle in my breast between two con- 
flicting emotions — my love of country and my love for your 
noble, dear, godly, but misguided, and now dead, son, Gen- 
eral Jackson. I knew not fully how much I loved him, 
despite his zeal in a bad cause, until I heard, a few mo- 
ments ago, of his death. My judgment and my conscience 
cannot but approve of this dispensation of Divine Provi- 
dence, whilst my heart cannot but mourn, and mine eyes 
cannot but weep, for the loss of one so justly dear (except 
for the one great error) to us all. I have never for a day 
forgotten your emphatic prediction, uttered in a mournful 
tone, more than two years ago, ' Jackson will perish in this 
war. ' And now that sad apprehension is history. 

"Eight days ago, viz., on the 10th inst., I learned, from 
some prisoners taken in a prize, that Jackson had been 
wounded, and his arm amputated near the shoulder. I feared 
the worst; for I knew that his constitution must have been 
pretty well run down with toil and exposure. This morn- 
ing, about three o'clock, Lieutenant-Commander Jouett 
sent in nine prisoners, whom he had taken from under the 
guns of Fort Morgan, having boarded a large schooner 
loaded with cotton and burned her within three hundred 
yards of the fort. The captain of this schooner, who is 
quite an intelligent man, was standing on the quarter-deck 
of our ship this morning at half-past five, when I approached 
him, and, after some other inquiries, I asked him if he had 
heard how General Jackson was getting. ' He's dead, 
sir,' was his reply. 'Dead, sir?' 'Yes; he only lived 
about a week.' I confess I was shocked, stunned; for I 
had heard that after the amputation he was doing well. I 
was completely unmanned, and had no heartfor the con- 



55: 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 



gratulations that I heard around me, concerning the capture 
of several vessels last night and this morning. I sought 
my state-room, to weep there. Is it wrong, is it treason, 
to mourn for a good and great, though a mistaken, man ? 
I cannot feel it to be so. I loved him dearly — but now — ■ 
he is with dear, dear Ellje and the rest ! O God ! thou 
doest righteously. Yea ! is there not mercy in this sad end 
of him we could not but love ? Oh, give us grace to ac- 
quiesce in these terrible mysteries of thy providence ! God 
comfort thee, my brother; I know He will. 

" I now have more confidence in the ultimate success of 
our cause. So long as such men as Thomas J. Jackson and 
Thomas Cobb were against us, I was puzzled to know why 
the God, whose I believe them to be, should permit them 
to be on the wrong side. But now they have both fallen ; 
I feel that God is taking them away from the evil to come ; 
and if our rulers will only yield to the wishes of the people 
and make the Constitution of the United States the basis 
of adjustment and the aim of the war, God will soon give 
us the victory. The moral effect of the loss of Jackson 
will be greater to them than the loss of 20,000 men. 

"I am glad, too, that since it was God's will he should 
die, he should fall by the hands of those whom he was help- 
ing to destroy our country, instead of by our own bullets. 
It seems that eight of them fell by the fire of their own 
troops as he and his staff were returning from a reconnois- 
sance. Three were killed at once, and Jackson and four 
others wounded. My informant could not give me any of 
the names of his staff that were shot. 

" God comfort and pity his poor bereaved widow ! I 
believe she got to him, and was with him when he died. I 
try to pray for her — for she is desolate indeed. 

" I do not know that I described to you the parting scene 
between General Jackson and myself. It was at the base 
of that huge precipice, the Maryland Heights, at Harper's 
Ferry. We had been conferring for two hours; I striving 
to show him that the rebellion was inexcusable. The time 
arrived that we must part. None were present but my poor 
boy, the General, myself, and our God. He held his mag- 
nificent field-horse by the bridle-rein. His left hand was 
gauntlet-gloved. He grasped mine with his right. I said, 
' Farewell, General ; may we meet under happier circum- 



"STONEWALL" JACKSON. 553 

stances; if not in this troubled world, may we meet in' — 
My voice failed me, — tears were upon the cheeks of both, 
— he raised his gloved hand, pointed upward, and finished 
my sentence with the' words — ' in heaven !' And so, with- 
out another word, we parted ; he mounted and rode away, 
and if we ever meet it will be ' in heaven !' God comfort 
us and all that mourn his loss, and give us all grace to 
secure that meeting ! 

" Oh, my heart is sometimes broken — sometimes, alas ! 
bitter, when I think of these desolations, caused by the 
ambition and fanaticism of bad men ! 

"Please, as you have opportunity, assure our friends of 
my sincere condolence in this last sorrow. We hear that 
Hooker's defeat was terrible, and that but for an error of 
Lee, in ordering the recovery of a fortified hill, Jackson 
and Longstreet would have environed our whole army. 
My dear wife will give you all details of personal news. 
Pray much for me. I want to be holy, for our Lord is 
coming, either personally or by terrible judgments. 

''Love to all with you and at Philadelphia. 

" Your sympathizing brother, 

"D. X. Junkin. 

"Rev. Dr. G. Junkin." 

As much curiosity has existed in regard to the man 

whose death is alluded to in the foregoing letter, it may 

be acceptable, by way of showing his spirit, to insert one 

from himself, addressed to his father-in-law, after the 

latter's exodus from Virginia, but before any blood had 

been shed : 

" Harper's Ferry, May 22d, 1861. 

" My dear Doctor, — Since we parted, I have frequently 
thought of you, and was much gratified at the reception of 
your letter. Say to Uncle D. X. that Major Preston has 
in charge the carrying out of his request respecting G. 
He volunteered to see G. on the subject, or I would have 
attended to it in person. Should it appear that G. is will- 
ing to be discharged, I will write to the Governor at once. 
At present, Major P. is at Martinsburg, as an officer for 
taking the vote on the ordinance of secession, but he will 
return as soon as his duties shall have been discharged. 

47 



554 



LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 



" It is more than gratifying, in these times, to see our 
General Assembly convening at the appointed place and 
time, under the banner of the Prince of Peace. May the 
blessing of God rest upon them and their efforts, is my 
earnest prayer. 

" I feel unusually concerned about our Foreign Mission- 
aries, but my consolation is, that ' all things work together 
for good to them that love God.' We know that the church 
is safe. Give my love to J., George, John, Uncle D. X., 
and their families. 

"Affectionately yours, 

" T. J. Jackson." 

The original of this letter is in possession of Dr. Sprague, 
the biographer, having been given to him at his request. 

It is evident, from this letter, that such men as Jackson 
did not contemplate at that time the severance of the Pres- 
byterian Church. The vote of Virginia upon the Ordi- 
nance of Secession had not as yet been ascertained, and 
the troops under Jackson were professedly defending the 
soil of Virginia against a threatened invasion ; and up to 
this time he had hopes that an adjustment of the public 
troubles might be reached. His solicitude about our 
Foreign Missionaries rose from the fear that amid the 
agitations of the country they might be left to suffer for 
want of funds to support them. 

The course of General Jackson, and of thousands of 
others, illustrates the danger of a single important error of 
opinion. The parting scene alluded to in the first of the 
foregoing letters, was at the close of a protracted conversa- 
tion between the General and the writer, in which the latter 
sought to convince him that the attitude assumed by the 
Southern States was a great blunder, — a rebellion without 
a cause ; that Mr. Lincoln sincerely designed to administer 
the government in a constitutional way ; that whilst he would 
discourage the extension of slavery into the Territories, he 
would not interfere with it, or any other domestic institu- 



JACKSON'S DOCTRINE OF ALLEGIANCE. 555 

tion of the South, in the States ; that if the Southern States 
would remain in the Union they and the conservative party 
of the North had a clear and decided working majority in 
both houses of Congress, and that if the South would stand 
by the Union and the Constitution they would find all their 
rights secured ; but that the attempt to disrupt the nation 
would bring inevitable disaster, and, even if successful, 
would result in the destruction of the very interests they 
aimed to secure ; whilst the sundering of the Union would 
inaugurate the wars of a hundred generations in America, 
and repeat the bloody history of Europe. 

The doctrine with which General Jackson replied to all 
this reasoning was simple, comprehensive, plausible, yet 
fallacious and disastrous. It was : 

"As a Christian man, my first allegiance is due to my 
State, the State of Virginia; and every other State has a 
primal claim to the fealty of her citizens, and may justly 
control tiieir allegiance. If Virginia adheres to the United 
States, I adhere ; her determination must control mine." 

This is the substance of his creed upon the question of 
allegiance. It was in vain we argued with him that this 
doctrine was false, disintegrating, destructive of all possible 
nationality ; that under our glorious Constitution, which 
secured all necessary rights to every State, strong or weak, 
and guaranteed the advantages resulting from distributed 
powers and local legislation, such a doctrine was as useless 
as it was dangerous : he still adhered to the opinion. It 
had been early inculcated, and had strengthened with his 
strength. With him it was a conscientious conviction, 
and with almost the entire population of the South. And 
with such a conviction, it is not matter of wonder, that 
those who held it would go into the war honestly and from 
a sense of duty. Like Paul when he persecuted the church, 
they verily thought they ought to obey each the behests 



556 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

of the State to which they owed allegiance. Their sin 
lay in a false faith. And this proves that belief is never a 
matter of indifference. An erroneous belief does always, 
in honest minds, lead to error in practice. It is only the 
hypocritical who fail to carry out in action their convic- 
tions. With a man like Thomas J. Jackson there could 
be no such hesitancy ; his career was dictated by con- 
scientious principle. We of the North think the principle 
is wrong, dangerous, disastrous. The men of the South 
may have been just as honest in thinking it right and 
safe. 

Before Virginia made the fatal decision to adopt the 
Ordinance of Secession, there were no more earnest Union 
men in the country than Jackson and Preston ; but the 
moment their State seceded they felt it to be duty to go 
with her. We think they were wrong, but they were con- 
scientiously wrong. 

And this view of the case shows the absurdity of expect- 
ing evangelical repentance for political sins, and of making 
political opinion a test of piety. A Scotchman may con- 
scientiously believe that monarchy is the best government, 
and may feel it to be his duty to be loyal, even to a bad 
king ; an American may claim the right of resisting the 
authority of that same king, and may do it conscientiously. 
May they not both be Christian men ? 

On the 6th of May, 1864, Dr. Junkin, by invitation, 
delivered a sermon at Altoona, Pa., upon the occasion of 
the installation of a former pupil, the Rev. Robert M. 
Wallace, as pastor of the church in that place. It was a 
discourse which had been delivered several times before, 
but the members of the Presbytery of Huntingdon then 
present expressed a wish to have it printed. It was accord- 
ingly published in a neat pamphlet of 48 pages. It is 
entitled The Two Commissions — the Apostolical and 
Evangelical, and is one of the most compact, lucid, and 



PREACHING AT FORT DELAWARE. 



557 



conclusive arguments extant against the arrogant claims of 
the prelatical doctrine of apostolical succession. Every 
young preacher who desires to possess a brief and satisfac- 
tory statement of the true idea and authority of the Chris- 
tian ministry, and the constitution of the church, ought to 
obtain it. 

In June, 1864, he was again invited to resume labor in 
the Canal Street Church, N. Y. ; but as he was employed 
ministering to the soldiers and prisoners at Fort Delaware, 
he declined the invitation. An extract or two from the 
letter to his brother, declining the proposal, will throw 
light upon this period of his life : 

" I have concluded to say nay to the Canal Street people. 
Tell Brother Lowrey* my heart is with them, and I should 
delight to serve them did not Providence seem to call me 
elsewhere. I have just returned from Fort Delaware, where 
I have been preaching and distributing the books of our 
Board. There are at Fort Delaware 9000 prisoners, and I 
see by this morning's paper that 450 more will reach there 
to-day; and there are 1500 soldiers, and some hundreds of 
mechanics, etc., making, perhaps, 11,000. Now, there I 
can have an audience of 2000 hearers almost any hour, and 
they are anxious hearers. The privates (prisoners) are the 
most hopeful. They press and pack close up, and stand 
for more than an hour, listening, and weeping often. I 
find many old acquaintances. Dr. McFarland's second son 
is here in the officers' barracks. Dr. Handy, in the eleventh 
month of his prisonership, is doing a blessed work. My 
books the poor fellows almost tear, pulling them from one 
another. Oh, they are very hungry ! sorrow makes them 
ready to hear the gospel. Many are sick. . . A regi- 
ment from Steubenville, O., went down the same day with 
me. Captain Boals says he knows the mayor of that city, 
our brother, M. O. J. . . . I never had such a field 
of labor; tell the people of Canal Street I can't refuse to 
work at the Fort; they must excuse me." 

* Elder of Canal Street Church. 
47* 



55 8 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

In this manner did Dr. Junkin labor on until the sur- 
render of General Lee brought the terrible struggle to a 
close. When the last of the prisoners were permitted to 
return to their homes, he felt at liberty to turn to other 
work, but seemed not to think for one hour of putting off 
his harness ; and for one so willing to toil, employment is 
always ready. 

In July, 1865, he went to meet his surviving brothers at 
the old family homestead, Hope Mills, in Mercer County. 
There the five surviving brothers enjoyed a reunion after 
years of separation. William lived in the homestead, Ben- 
jamin in the vicinity, Matthew came from Steubenville, 
and the younger brother from Chicago, where he then re- 
sided as pastor of the North Presbyterian Church of that 
city. The meeting actually took place at Pulaski, on ac- 
count of the detention of one of the brothers. Two years 
thereafter they again met at Steubenville, and enjoyed a 
sweet season of fraternal fellowship, and parted, never all 
to meet again in this life. Before another year two of them 
were not — for God had taken them. 

In 1865, his work on Sanctification was written and 
issued by the Presbyterian Board of Publication. It is a 
book of 268 pages, and is a lucid and thorough discussion 
of the subject indicated by its title, explaining the doctrine, 
the means, the agency, and the process of sanctification, 
and exhibiting its connection with the other parts of the 
scheme of salvation. Perhaps no book that he has written 
is likely to be more useful than this short but admirable 
treatise. 

About the same time, he published a brief treatise on 
the subject of Baptism. This was elicited by circumstances 
which occurred previous to his taking his pen ; but, al- 
though written with a special object, the tractate is worthy 
of its author and is of permanent value. 

In addition to this, he shortly afterward prepared a work 



THE WIDOWS.— THE MAGDALEN. 



559 



of 168 pages, entitled "THE TABERNACLE; or, the 
gospel according to moses," which was issued in 1865, by 
the Board of Publication. In this he evolves, with admir- 
able clearness, the lessons of the Mosaic ritual, and points 
out the "better things to come," of which that ritual was 
an instructive "shadow." It is a volume that ought to be 
in every Christian's, at least in every minister's, library. 

There are, in Philadelphia, two charitable institutions 
of an interesting character, humble in their pretension, but 
beneficent in their design and influence, — the Asylum for 
Aged and Indigent Widows, and the Magdalen Asylum, for 
the rescue and reformation of fallen women. In both of 
them there is provision for religious worship ; but, for 
special reasons, the preaching and devotional services are 
held on a week-day. Dr. Junkin was requested, in 1864, 
to undertake the work of ministering in both of these 
institutions. The appointment came from the Board of 
Trustees of the General Assembly, in pursuance of a clause 
in the will of Elias Boudinot, LL.D. He consented, 
and continued to perform the duties of this humble mis- 
sion until the hand of death was laid upon him. Perhaps 
no work of his life furnished a lovelier illustration of his 
perfectly unambitious and Christ-like consecration to the 
business of saving souls than this. To behold this man 
of mighty intellect and commanding pulpit power, gliding 
weekly to these homes of the aged, the feeble, and the 
fallen, and preaching to the inmates in tender, earnest 
words, adapted to their several conditions, the unsearch- 
able riches of Christ, and to witness the fact that he 
executed this humble mission with as much punctuality, 
solemnity, and faithfulness as if it had been the gravest 
undertaking of his life, was proof that, he was largely pos- 
sessed of the spirit of Him who was "meek and lowly of 
heart." This Christ-like portion of his labors was all the 
lovelier when contrasted with other synchronous toils. For 



560 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKhV. 

whilst he was thus instructing and comforting the weak, 
the world-worn, and the straying, he was grappling with 
giant strength two of the mightiest enemies of religion, 
liberty, and social order — Intemperance and the Anti- 
Sabbath spirit of the age. Intemperance was rife, and the 
abettors of the liquor-traffic rampant, at the close of the 
war. Efforts were being put forth by the friends of tem- 
perance to check the tide of evil, and Dr. Junkin threw 
himself into the enterprise with all the fervor and energies 
of his younger years. In speeches, in conventions, through 
the press, and by personal visits to the Legislature, he 
sought to help forward the good cause. 

About the same time, the enemies of the Lord's day were 
seeking to have the laws for the protection of citizens in 
the enjoyment of that holy day repealed. The daily press 
was extensively enlisted by this demoralizing interest, and 
a powerful effort was inaugurated to prostrate the day of 
rest. Against this Dr. Junkin lifted up a standard. He 
wrote for the press, he travelled, he lectured, he corre- 
sponded, he rallied others to the rescue, he wrote a volume 
in defence of the Sabbath, he repaired to the Legislature, 
and by argument and personal influence, strove to protect 
the memorial day from desecration. It was amazing the 
amount of work he bestowed upon this matter in addition 
to his other labors. 

In a letter to the author, resident then in Chicago, dated 
Philadelphia, March 7th, 1866, he says: 

" I have been very busy with my book on the Hebrews ; 
have written three hundred and sixty pages of large letter 
sheet, and have got to Chapter vi. 20. But for two months 
this has been arrested by the Sabbath war. The conspiracy 
of the Romanists, the infidel Germans, Jews, Unitarians, 
Universalists, Deists of all forms, and the rum and lager 

men, is very formidable in numbers; and having for 

their leader, and we having no daily press open to us, the 
battle has to be fought at great disadvantage. We are now 



1 SABBATISMOS: 



56l 



certain of defeating them this time. But they have taken 
a new tack, have a bill up in the House to authorize a vote 
at the next general election, ' Sabbath Cars' or ' No Sab- 
bath Cars.' Thus the law of God is to be submitted to a 
popular vote ! If this succeeds, we cannot buy votes as 
they can. The liquor and the money we might get, but 
conscience forbids bribery. We have a sure majority in 
the Senate. 

"Our ninth week of the union prayer-meeting is in pro- 
gress. This takes one to two hours every day. I miss 
none. But my time is chiefly thrown upon the Sabbath 
question. I am preparing a book of some 175 pages. It 
will be ready in three weeks, D. V." 

The book here alluded to is his " Sabbatismos," a 
volume of 215 pages, containing a succinct, yet original 
and powerful argument for the Holy Day, which was pub- 
lished soon after the date of the above letter. He not 
only published this volume, and wrote copiously for the 
weekly press in behalf of the Sabbath, but he traversed 
many portions of the State, delivering sermons and lectures 
upon the subject, and was instrumental in awaking the 
people to a consideration of the importance of this great 
safeguard of religion and liberty. It would astonish the 
reader to examine his register of preaching, and reckon the 
number of places visited, and of discourses delivered. 
How he endured the physical toil is marvellous ! 

Meanwhile, the subject of this memoir was far from in- 
different to the political condition of his country, for whose 
union and government he had sacrificed and toiled so much. 
Concerning public affairs he was intensely solicitous. With 
the murdered President, he thought that the seceded States 
had never been out of the Union. Like him, he was un- 
willing to acknowledge that secession had been a success ; 
but held, with him, that when the insurrection was sup- 
pressed, the State governments, which had been temporarily 
whelmed beneath its surges, would rise and resume, under 
proper guarantees, their normal positions in the Union. 



562 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK' IN. 

He approved of Mr. Lincoln's theory of restoration, and, 
with that good and sagacious magistrate, was of opinion, 
that the Constitution itself contained enough recuperative 
energy, if rightly applied, to restore the health of the 
nation. With every civist who understands the principles 
of free government, he held that crime was to be punished 
by adjudication, not by legislation. He judged that it 
would have been safer, juster, wiser, and more in accord- 
ance with the rights of man and regulated liberty, to have 
arraigned and consigned to exemplary penalties a few 
of the leaders of the revolt, rather than, by a system of 
punitive and vindictive legislation, to vex and oppress the 
masses ; and he was especially opposed to those measures 
which punished the innocent with the guilty, making no 
distinction between the in tensest secessionist and the 
Union man. He held that no man ought to be punished 
before fair trial and just conviction ; and most earnestly 
deprecated every expedient which seemed to dispense with 
the judiciary branch of the Government, or to trench upon 
its sacred functions. Not only acquiescing but rejoicing 
in the downfall of slavery, yet he doubted the wisdom 
and humanity of entrusting to the emancipated the control 
of the government of the States in which they are found, 
until after a season of education and probation. He at 
one time was seriously apprehensive, that the judiciary 
branch of the Government would be prostrated before the 
legislative, and rejoiced greatly when that danger seemed 
to pass. He doubted the wisdom of settling great princi- 
ples of constitutional law, at a time when the waves, which 
had been lashed into wild commotion by the storms of civil 
war, were still unquieted. He venerated the Constitution 
of his country as the grandest effort of human wisdom anc 
patriotism, and trembled to see that stately bark straining 
every timber upon a stormy sea, whilst unskilled hands 
were tampering with her planks. Many an utterance of 



OPINIONS ON CHURCH UNION. 



563 



solicitude could be quoted from his correspondence of these 
later years, — all fraught with statesmanly sagacity, warm 
with patriotism, and ennobled with that Christ-like magna- 
nimity which pities the erring and esteems it base to insult 
or oppress the fallen. 

In regard to the progress of affairs in the Presbyterian 
Church he was also deeply solicitous. His mind and his 
habits were essentially conservative. With a heart glowing 
with affection, yet he always kept his feelings subject to 
his judgment. When the movement toward a union of the 
two branches of the Presbyterian Church was proposed, 
first at Newark in a voluntary assemblage, afterward at St. 
Louis in the General Assembly, he apprehended evil, and 
discouraged the movement. He feared that a reflex wave 
from "the battle of the warrior" was about to submerge 
much that was valuable in the church. He feared that the 
cry of " Union" which was raised, was a mere echo of that 
which was started by the voice of patriotic enthusiasm. 
He knew that there was no analogy between the union of 
the nation and the union of the church, yet he feared that 
the civil sentiment had begotten the ecclesiastical, and 
that there was a disposition to compromise truth in an 
enthusiastic zeal for unity. He had witnessed, nearly forty 
years before, the turmoil produced by the effort to make 
those walk together who were not "agreed." For thirty 
years he had seen the happy results, in both branches of 
the church, of separate organization and action, and he 
feared that a premature attempt to unite in one organization 
men who yet entertained diversity of doctrinal opinions, 
would result in one of two evils, either of which he deemed 
a terrible price to pay for visible unity, viz., a compromise 
of essential truth and the estoppel of discipline at the start, 
or a renewal of the strife which had formerly diverted the 
energies of the church from her appropriate work, and 
which had been allayed only by separation. 



5 64 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

With these views, he could not favor the proposed union. 
He resisted with all his power and influence the proposi- 
tions which were subsequently embodied in the Albany- 
basis of reunion, and advised their rejection. He still 
feared that latitude of interpretation in matters essential 
might be claimed, and he knew that if claimed and yielded, 
corruption of doctrine would result, and if resisted, strife.* 

Since the union has been consummated, it is devoutly to 
be desired that his apprehensions may prove groundless. 
If such shall be the result, and the spirits of the departed 
are permitted to know the condition of the church militant, 
none will rejoice over that result more than the glorified 
spirit of George Junkin. 

He did not live to witness the reunion, as his death 
occurred the day before the meeting of the General 
Assembly of 1868. 

Thus did this man of thought, of heart, of prayer, of 
wondrous work, labor on until his Lord sent suddenly for 
him. The very week before he was taken, he had finished 
and put in complete order for the press, a work which he 
had been often urged to undertake, — a Commentary on 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. This portion of God's word 
had been a favorite theme of study with him, and a 
subject of frequent pulpit exegesis during all his life. 
Probably no man of his generation had bestowed upon 
it more thought and investigation. The work is very 
thorough and complete. He had been negotiating with 
a publisher, and the manuscript was in his hands, but no 
definite arrangement had been effected. He had con- 
tinued to preach until a few days before his decease. On 
the 29th of April he had preached with his usual power and 
tenderness, in West Spruce Street, from that favorite Psalm, 
cxvi. 1-9. He officiated regularly in the Widows' and 

* See Appendix. 



LAST ILLNESS, 



56S 



the Magdalen Asylums. His last recorded text of discourse 
to the widows was John xiv. 1, "Let not your heart be 
troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me. In 
my Father's house are many mansions." A few days pre- 
ceding his death he preached at the Magdalen Asylum, 
his last public official duty. It was fitting, that one so 
much like Jesus, for he was the purest man the writer ever 
knew, should make the last offer of the gospel which he 
announced on earth to the fallen, bidding them look up 
and hope, trusting in that blood which cleanseth from all 
sin. 

On the day of his departure, and just about the time the 
spirit was leaving the body, the congregation of aged 
widows, in the asylum, had made their customary prepara- 
tion for divine service, expecting their venerated and be- 
loved pastor. The seats were arranged, the little stand 
and Bible set out, the widows gathered, but he came not ! 
A number of them attended his funeral, and one of them 
said, alluding to the arrangements they had made, "He 
never disappointed us before !" 

Dr. Junkin had sometimes expressed to his brother, and 
other intimate friends, the apprehension that he would 
shrink with timidity unbecoming a Christian from the ap- 
proach of death. With all his indomitable courage, he 
confessed to a dread of the pains of death. But the ill- 
ness which terminated his life was so sudden, painful, and 
rapid in doing its work, that this apprehension did not ap- 
pear to be realized. On Monday morning, May 18th, he 
arose as usual, dressed himself, and, entering his daughter's 
room, adjacent to his own, remarked that he felt a severe 
pain in his breast, and asked her to prepare a remedy, 
which was done. But the application gave no relief. Med- 
ical aid was summoned : the disease proved to be angina 
pectoris. That day he seemed to suffer intensely, but made 
no complaint, except the utterance, "You do not know 
48 



5 66 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

how dreadfully I suffer." Still, neither he nor his children, 
who attended upon him, seemed to apprehend a fatal issue. 

On Tuesday, the 19th, he seemed easier, and less lively, 
probably the effect of anodynes. And the same condition 
continued till the afternoon of the 20th. His son, who was 
a Commissioner to the General Assembly, had purposed to 
set out for Albany, so little was a serious result appre- 
hended. Up to the time that he was seized with this com- 
plaint, his health was good, "his natural strength seemed 
scarce abated," and the apprehension that death was so 
near did not appear to have occurred to him. Toward 
evening his extremities became somewhat cold, and, whilst 
his daughter was fetching appliances for producing warmth, 
he grew suddenly worse, attempted to speak, but effected 
no utterance of a connected sentence. The only words 
that the eager ear of his son could distinctly catch, were 
the words, "Christ," "The Church," "Heaven;" and 
"he was not, for God took him!" It was scarcely a 
struggle, and all was rest. The Angel of the Covenant 
was better to him than he had ventured to hope. He liter- 
ally fell with his harness on, in the fulness of his strength, 
trusting, loving, working to the last. So many of his 
cherished ones were already in the house of many man- 
sions, that it would seem more like home to him than any 
place on earth. He was a pilgrim and a sojourner here. 
There he is at home ! 

The funeral was attended, on Saturday, May 23d, from 
his son's residence, in Spruce Street. A large number of 
clergymen and other citizens, Dr. Cattell, President of 
Lafayette College, several members of the Board of 
Trustees of that Institution, and many sympathizing friends, 
were in attendance, notwithstanding the inclemency of the 
day. 

The services were directed by the Rev. Wm. Pureed, 
D.D., pastor of the family, who delivered an eloquent 



FUNERAL. S 6 7 

address commemorative of Dr. Junkin's life, characteristics, 
and labors. Dr. J. H. M. Knox and Rev. John Chambers 
also made earnest and touching addresses, and the Rev. 
Dr. James Clark, long a co-presbyter and friend of the 
deceased, offered, impressively, the concluding prayer. 

His mortal remains rest beneath the grand old forest 
trees which shadow the graves in the beautiful Woodland 
Cemetery, on the banks of the Schuylkill, there to await 
the resurrection of the just. 

A simple monumental head- and foot-stone, of massive 
marble, marks the lovely spot, bearing the inscription : 

The REV. GEORGE JUNKIN, D.D., LL.D. 

Born November ist, 1790. 

Died May 20th, 1868. 

"Well done, good and faithful servant." 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

.Testimonials— Of Rev. Charles Elliott, D.D.— Of Rev. T. H. Newton- 
Incidents — Characteristics — Of Martin L. Stoever, LL.D. — Of David 
Elliott, D.D.— Of Rev. R. M. Wallace— Of Mr. Fishburn— Action of 
General Assembly — Of Board of Publication — Testimony of his Brother. 

IN response to a request, inserted in two or three of 
our religious newspapers, that any of the friends, 
acquaintances, or pupils of Dr. George Junkin, who had 
letters or other documents that might be useful in the pre 
paration of his biography, would transmit them for such 
use, and that any who could furnish incidents illustrative 
of his life and character would favor the writer with them, 
many replies were made, and a large amount of valuable 
material furnished. Some of this has been interwoven in 
the narrative contained in preceding chapters. It is pro- 
posed in this to insert a few of the many testimonials which 
have been voluntarily sent ; and it is only regrbtted that 
the limits of the volume forbid the use of them .11. 

One of his pupils, the Rev. Dr. Charles Elliott, Profes- 
sor of Biblical Literature in the Seminary of the North- 
West, wrote as follows : 

" Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the North-West, 
"Chicago, III., January 3d, 1870. 

"Rev. D. X. Junkin, D.D. 

"Rev. and dear Sir, — You kindly asked me to com- 
municate to you some reminiscences of your departed 
brother. Were I to relate all that I remember of him, it 
would greatly exceed the brief limits which a sense of pro- 
priety dictates to me to observe, and probably reiterate 
what you have already received from others more capable 
than myself of estimating his exalted character. 
(568) 



TESTIMONIAL OF REV. CHARLES ELLIOTT. 



569 



" Your brother, Rev. Geo. Junkin, D.D., LL.D., was a 

remarkable man. There was nothing negative in his char- 
acter ; everything was decidedly positive. He was endowed 
with a vigorous, discriminating mind, which rendered his 
conceptions of truth clear ; and possessed of a strong and 
intense moral nature, which gave him great depth of con- 
viction and energy of will. 

" He was a man of great sincerity and transparency of 
character. It was not necessary to study him ; the whole 
man shone out. Everything about him was eminently self- 
revealing. He was neither a simulator nor a dissimulator ; 
but sincerity embodied. He had one aim, — the glory of 
God, — and his whole life was moulded by that aim. Utterly 
unselfish, he was always ready to sacrifice himself and all 
that he had for the cause of Christ and the good of man- 
kind. 

"As an educator of youth, he possessed many excellent 
qualifications. Among these the foremost was his positive 
and upright character. Next was his fresh and original 
method of communicating knowledge. He would fre- 
quently strike rich veins of thought, which would require 
much labor and time to explore and work out. 

"As a preacher, in some respects, he had few equals. 
He was exegetical, argumentative, and hortatory in the 
same discourse. He had great power over both the reason 
and the feelings. I have seen whole audiences enchained 
by the power of his logic, and moved to tears by his ten- 
der appeals. In argument he struck with the hammer of 
Thor; and in his appeals he glowed and spoke with the love 
of a seraph. 

"To him, under God, I am chiefly indebted for what I 
am. His memory is fragrant to me : I will cherish it until 
my latest breath. Had I the privilege of placing an inscrip- 
tion on his tomb, it should read : 

To 

My Dear Friend, 
who, during many days of toil and darkness, held the 
lamp of human love so high that its radiance shed a glory 
on those days, and made them the noontime of my life. 
"Yours very fraternally, 

"Charles Elliott." 



570 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE J UN KIN. 

The Rev. Thomas H. Newton, also a graduate of Lafa- 
yette College, some time Seamen's Chaplain in the Island 
of St. Thomas, and, whilst there, an interesting correspond- 
ent of The Presbyterian, subsequently a faithful but afflicted 
missionary in the West, sent a long communication, the 
whole of which, but for our limited space, we would insert. 
We give some extracts : 

" Carlinville, III., Dec. 9th, 1868. 
"To Rev. D. X. Junkin, D.D. 

"Dear Friend, — My soul looks out of, and works 
through, a body so enfeebled by protracted illness that it 
is out of my power to write all I would like to say con- 
cerning your late distinguished brother. But if a few notes 
can be of any service to you, .... I shall be exceeding 
glad, for he was held in highest estimation. I entered 
Lafayette College during the Presidency of Dr. Yeomans, 
and only became acquainted with your brother after his re- 
turn from Oxford. I was soon attracted to him, — I could 
scarce tell why ; but subsequent years, with their experi- 
ences, taught me that my extempore impressions were well 
founded." 

After alluding to some irregularities of the students for- 
merly witnessed, Mr. Newton proceeds: 

" But such things were never attempted under Dr. 
Junkin's administration. He was never nicknamed, and 
never intentionally disobeyed, so far as I know, and had 
wonderful influence in restraining evil. To illustrate this 
point, take a well-remembered incident. A charcoal-dealer 
from New Jersey had, on one occasion, discharged, for the 
use of the College, a load of coal, and, being belated, left 
his wain or wagon in a part of the College campus until" 
morning. After he had gone to his lodgings, some of the 
students — fledgeling lawyers, and embryo divines or doc- 
tors — proceeded to disintegrate the wain, and take it piece- 
meal to the third story of the College edifice, and there 
reconstruct it in the large hall. At early dawn, next day, 
they were chuckling over the astonishment of the teamster, 
when, coming with his horses, he found that his wagon had 



TESTIMONIAL OF REV. T. H. NEWTON. 



571 



been spirited away without making any tracks by which it 
might be traced. But their triumph was short. The 
tidings of the practical joke had reached the President's 
ears. He made no demonstration until we met him in 
prayer-hall. He rose to lead the worship ; but with a 
countenance awful as the storm-cloud. He surveyed the 
congregation a few moments in silence ; his breath and 
eye made the culprits cower, and subdued all into solem- 
nity. After this searching pause, he said, ' I understand 
some of you have been acting like foots. You have put a 
poor man to a great deal of trouble, and caused him to 
lose much time that was precious to him. You have dis- 
graced yourselves and the College ; and I shall expect you, 
immediately after prayers, to undo what you have done, so 
far as you can ; and never to repeat such an act, or you 
will escape with far different consequences to yourselves. ' 
It was amusing to see how the parties to the mischief rushed 
to the aid of the injured coal-man, whose wain was soon 
again dismembered, borne to terra firma, and reconstructed, 
so that he went on his way rejoicing. . . . 

"One of the characteristics of Dr. Junkin which always 
impressed me was the simple and firm nature of his belief. 
I had been a professor of religion for some years, and had 
seen men of eminent piety, but there was something about 
Dr. Junkin that evidently ' exceeded.' His belief was not 
something stretching simply beyond, a projection into the 
penumbra of the future, and not adapted to contact with 
mortal and temporal affairs. His religion was a system 
more than a philosophy, but containing a philosophy, and 
reaching to God as well as embracing man. His acts were 
regulated by a delicate and lofty conscientiousness, and 
founded on great principles. He acted as if he felt that 
all belonged to God. He would descend to no act for the 
sake of having offered to him the incense of adulation. 
He sought nothing as a favor which he felt entitled to as a 
right, nor would he purchase any elevation at the price of 
promised recompense in kind. And it is proper to add 
that he urged the same upon his students. . . . He 
walked in a constant light, which beamed all around him 
as a halo from heaven, as it really was. 

" I may be permitted to say, that I am indebted to no 
person, living or dead, so much as to Dr. Junkin, for a 



572 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

confirmation of my faith and the elements of right charac- 
ter. He referred everything to divine laws and fixed prin- 
ciples, beginning with our being, never leaving us, insepar- 
able from us. He was in moral philosophy profound and 
exact, simple and comprehensive, ever identifying it with 
Christianity itself. In this department I never met his 
equal. Nor is it disrespectful to the teachers under whom 
I subsequently sat, to say that they added nothing to my 
attainments — his instructions were exhaustive. I have 
always thought that the church lost much by not placing 
him in one of our theological seats, some of which have 
been occupied by far inferior men. 

" Upon his students he ever enjoined usefulness instead 
of self-seeking. An incident in my own history will illus- 
trate this. When about to leave the Seminary, I was trying 
to decide the question of accepting an invitation to labor 
in a destitute field in the ' Pines' of N. J. I asked the 
counsel of a professor, who advised me to ' go a year and 
prepare for a better place.' Doubting the propriety of 
making that humble field a stepping-stone, I wrote for ad- 
vice to my old master, then at Lexington, Va. I received 
a prompt reply, which I regret was lost when I fled from 
the Rebels of Missouri. I remember these words, charac- 
teristic of their author, which have proved the key-note of 
my life : ' You had better be the Oberlin of the Pines than 
the of .'* 

" My means were limited, and when I came to graduate I 
had so many liabilities that I was constrained to forego taking 
a diploma until my arrearages could be paid. I dreaded the 
denouement which I knew was inevitable on an approaching 
day. I kept silence, and nursed my sorrow, but in cheer- 
fulness. However, when that day came, I took advantage 
of an accidental meeting with the President, just at the 
head of the long stairs which climb the Bushkill Bluff on 
which the College stands. ' Can I detain you a moment, 
Doctor?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Then I beg to say that the state 
of my funds is such that, for the present, I cannot take my 
diploma : I must ask the Trustees to bear with me till I can 
liquidate my indebtedness.' 'Your bills are all paid, sir; 
you can go on and graduate.' ' Paid, sir ! To whom, then, 

* We omit the names of the eminent pastor and church, for obvious 
reasons. 



TESTIMONIAL OF REV. T. II. NEWTON. 



573 



must I feel obliged for this opportune kindness, that I may 
thank him ?' ' Thank your Saviour, sir,' said he, and started 
on with his peculiar abruptness. And I did thank my 
Saviour with tearful eyes, and have thanked Him ever since; 
more for such an instructor, however, than for relief from 
my embarrassments. I never knew how he had found out 
my difficulties : I had no claim upon him ; it was his spon- 
taneous kindness." 

Mr. Newton then recites some incidents illustrative of 
Dr. Junkin's penetration, parliamentary tact in the General 
Assembly, and his power in rebuking ambition in his 
brethren ; but we have not space for them. Mr. Newton 
further says : 

" He never forgot his students. They were his adopted 
children. He followed each one to the ends of the earth, 
if he went there, noticing everything they did, if open to 
observation. ' I was much interested in your letters from 
the West Indies,' said he to me, on my return thence. ' I 
am glad you are back;' and away he posted to join in the 
deliberations of the General Assembly, It was his brusque 
fashion, born of his intense thoughtfulness and devotion to 
the business in hand. It was his style, — as unavoidable in 
his manners as in his writings and his discourses. He 
arises to his theme like the king of day, throwing light on 
it at once, and burning on and upward with an irresistible 
power, and to a splendid zenith. And he recedes from 
the noon of his argument to its close, scattering light 
along his path till it needs no more, and drops it easily 
into the bosom of grateful shades, leaving it where it is 
natural to rest. He never is diverted from his main point 
in quest of ornaments, but his inspiration draws them to 
him, just as orderly as the genius of night belts the sky 
with constellations. 

" Everything finds its place in his well-ordered mind. 
He was unconsciously poet and syllogist. If his premises 
glowed with the blooms of his rhetoric, his argument was 
so prominently held up that no wreaths and posies could 
hide it. He taught logic, — was able to teach it, — it was 
inseparable from the constitution of his mind. Every 
proposition inevitably resolved itself, in his mind, into 



574 LIFE 0F DR - GEORGE JUNKIN. 

major, minor, and conclusion. Hence it was hard to de- 
ceive him, as he with magic adroitness laid all sophistry 
bare. ... In logical power he was, in my judgment, the 
peer of Calvin, though (and it is no disparagement) inferior 
to him in classic grace. In depth of emotion he was scarce 
inferior to Luther. He was not behind Knox in intrepidity. 
In zeal for truth and devotion to God, he came behind 
none of these ; whilst his heart, full of the fellowship of 
Jesus, ever yearned for the good of society and overflowed 
with love to man. His modesty sometimes bade him stop 
where a Knox or a Luther would have called for an 
advance. 

"His love to God and to man was an overflowing spring, 
welling over in his instructions to his pupils and flowing 
into his writings. Even his kingly logic could never break 
fellowship with sentiment. . . . But the strong man 
has run his race; yet his strength will never die, for his 
spirit has passed into institutions that can never perish. 

"Deeply to my regret, all my letters from Dr. Junkin 
were lost during the rebellion, and I have but one, his last. 
It is characteristic of much that I have ascribed to him in 
what I have said. It shows the grand elevation of his 
piety, his patience under terrible trials, his magnanimity ; 
and in the simple account he gives of his present employ- 
ments, we see how he ' endured hardness as a good soldier.' 

" Though then seventy-four years old, he for the first 
time in his life had been to the sea-shore, in quest of 
health ! What a contrast with the kid-gloved and per- 
fumed little effeminates, redolent with musk or balm of a 
thousand flowers, that sometimes fill our pulpits as divines, 
and who are yearly habitues of Saratoga and Newport, 
or the heroes of the more ' ambitious trip to Europe' ! 
And his rest, so needful and so grateful, was induced only 
by his toil in the self-denying duties of preacher among 
the prisoners of war. And he modestly proposes to add 
to these labors the function of a colporteur. ' I may have 
to distribute the tracts and books myself,' he quietly sug- 
gests. 

" ' Digging can't degrade me. I am Gurowski,' said that 
famous count. A noble sentiment, beautifully illustrated 
in these humble labors of your brother. 

"Once more: this letter reveals a characteristic of Dr. 



TESTIMONIAL OF M. L. STOEVER, LL.D. 



575 



Junkin peculiarly lovely and honorable, his love of do- 
mestic life. I had observed it long ago, and remember 
that in all his moral teachings he set forth the family as 
of prime importance. And his teachings were embodied 
in the realities of his own home. To him the family was a 
joy forever. He looked on it as the source of all good 
human influences. Hence in the family he forgot his 
severer duties, his heart was unlocked, his soul flowed out 
in innocent simplicity, its graver greatness melted and min- 
gled with the gentler impulses of domestic affection. Here 
he filled his duty, as in the professor's chair, the pulpit, or 
the arena of debate. He was president, professor, preacher, 
moderator, disputant, friend, brother, father, with equal 
facility and completeness. He felt that God had called 
him alike to each office, and he discharged the duty with 
holy fidelity. 

"We open this letter, then, and find without surprise 
the naive description it contains of his happiness in his 
present domestic relations. He was happy with his grand- 
children as he had been with his own, suffused with delight 
in the family of his son, whose no small praise may be that 
he seeks to conform to his father's model. ' How happy I 
am,' exclaims he, in this letter, 'and how grateful I ought 
to be!' Adding, with illustrious modesty, 'Excuse the 
egotism of an old man.' And happy are we for thee, thou 
aged and wayworn servant of God ! Glad that thy sun is 
setting amid things so long beautiful to thy own concep- 
tions, and that thy heart sings thereat, — glad that it shall 
rise again, and beam upon thee, amid thy sainted dear 
ones, and in the presence of thy God, in one perpetual 
noontide of delight!" 

From the letter of M. L. Stoever, LL.D., Professor in 
Pennsylvania College (Lutheran), an extract has already 
been inserted upon a previous page. The following is the 
first part of the same : 

" George Junkin, Esq. 

"I am gratified to learn that a memoir of your worthy 
father is to be prepared. Such a volume will be interest- 
ing to his numerous friends, and a valuable history of the 
times in which he lived. He was identified with so 



576 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

many interests, and exercised so decided an influence in 
every sphere in which he moved, that his biography will 
necessarily be rich in incidents, and full of instruction. 

"Dr. Junkin was, in many respects, a most remarkable 
man, and wherever he labored he left the indelible im- 
press of his character. When a boy of eight or ten years 
old I met him first. He was at that time principal of 
the ' Manual Labor Academy,' in my native place, and fre- 
quently visited my mother's home. His appearance, his 
manner, his characteristic speeches, his earnestness, and 
kindness of heart, are just as fresh and vivid before me as 
the scenes of yesterday. I followed him with affectionate 
interest to Easton, and thence to other points of influence 
and usefulness which he occupied, but never had any corre- 
spondence with him, and supposed that I had been entirely 
forgotten. My surprise was, therefore, very great, more 
than twenty years after our separation in Germantown, on 
casually meeting him on Arch Street, to receive from him 
the cordial recognition, the warm grasp of the hand, the 
friendly salutation by my Christian name. To hear him 
recount occurrences of the past, and to recall familiar faces, 
seemed a most wonderful exercise of memory. I did not 
see him again till we met at Gettysburg after the memora- 
ble battle." 

From the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Al- 
toona, the following was received : 

"Altoona, Pa., May 31st, 1870. 
"Rev. D. X. Junkin, D.D. 

" My dear Sir, — Understanding that you are preparing 
for the press a biography of your deceased brother, the late 
Dr. George Junkin, and believing that anything relative to 
that venerated and excellent man must possess more or 
less interest to those who know him best, I send you the 
following, which you are at liberty to use in any manner 
you think proper: 

"In the year 1848, Dr. Junkin was called from the 
presidency of Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., to that of 
Washington College, Lexington, Va. This was regarded 
as a sad blow to the former college, as Dr. J. was not only 
its founder but its greatest benefactor. Indeed, so essen- 



TESTIMONIAL OF DAVID ELLIOTT, D.D. 577 

tial did his official connection seem to the prosperity of 
the college, that many began to suppose, when that con- 
nection was once severed, the institution would go down, 
and that, consequently, there was very little encouragement 
for students to remain there. Accordingly, influenced 
partly by this feeling, but mainly, I think, by a devoted 
attachment to the retiring President, many of the more 
advanced students determined to follow him to Virginia, 
in order that they might still enjoy the privilege of sitting, 
as learners, at his feet, and of graduating under him. 

"The names of my classmates who went with me, if I 
remember rightly, are as follows, viz.: — Samuel Campbell, 
E. D. Finney, John M. Godown, G. K. Marriner, S. K. 
Raymond, Robert Watts, John Armstrong, A. M. Lowry, 
G. A. Mitchell, A. W. Sproull, W. Redfield Sharpe. 

" Indeed, I think I may say, without the least color of 
exaggeration, that I never knew a man who possessed the 
faculty of attaching students to himself more strongly than 
Dr. Junkin. And this was owing to the fact that he was 
not only the student's friend, but, also, to the possession of 
consummate ability, and entire disinterestedness in his 
aims and purposes, qualities which never fail to excite con- 
fidence, as well as to awaken admiration, on the part of 
others. Taking him all in all, Dr. Junkin was certainly a very 
remarkable man, and few have ever lived to better purpose 
than he. To many of us, who knew him only to love him, 
his memory is precious ; and we cherish the fond hope of 
seeing his venerable form again in heaven, and of uniting 
with him in celebrating the rich grace of that adorable 
Saviour whom he loved so well. 

"Very truly and respectfully yours, 

"R. M. Wallace." 

The venerable Dr. David Elliott, of Alleghany, in a 
letter already quoted in part, says : 

"Of the time of my first acquaintance with Dr. Junkin 
my recollection is not exact. We were members together 
of the General Assemblies of 1830, 1835, 1837, and 1844. 
Of this last he was Moderator, and discharged the duties 
with promptness and ability. In the discussions of 1835 
and 1837, on the great questions then at issue, he took an 

49 



578 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

active part, although not as often on the floor as some 
others. He was a man of quick and strong perceptions, 
whose mind took a vigorous grasp of any subject presented 
to it, especially if it was one which was debatable. His 
convictions in relation to the various questions brought 
into controversy during his public life, were very decided, 
and he never left any one in doubt as to what his opin- 
ions were. Hence, when called upon to defend his opin- 
ions, or to oppose views which he deemed erroneous, he 
did it ' with his might.' And, however others might differ 
with him, they could not fail to recognize and approve the 
depth and sincerity of his convictions. Being endowed 
with a vigorous mind and warm affections, when he entered 
the field of controversy, the ardor which he evinced made 
the impression, upon those who did not know him, that he 
was under the influence of excited temper. The peculiarity 
of his voice doubtless tended to make this impression, it 
being of a sharp and penetrating character. He himself 
was aware of this. I once heard him, in the midst of an 
earnest speech in the General Assembly, when his voice had 
reached its highest tone, stop and admonish his hearers not 
to attribute the fault of his voice to his temper, assuring 
them that he was in perfect good humor, but only earnest 
in his advocacy of truth in opposition to that which he be- 
lieved to be error. . . . 

"Persons who have read Dr. Junkin's publications, need 
not be told that he was a man of vigorous and brilliant in- 
tellect. This his opponents can testify. If there was a 
weak point in their argument, or a defect in their logic, he 
was quick to detect and powerful to expose it. . . . But 
his work for Christ on earth is done, and he has gone to 
occupy ' a place' in one of those mansions which his 
Saviour has prepared for him." 

One of his pupils, a graduate of Washington College, 
and a gentleman of high standing in Virginia, in a letter 
of condolence to a member of Dr. Junkin's family, says : 

"It will prove an abiding consolation to you to know, 
that the long life which has just ended, has been marked 
with everything that can assure a believer of the religion 
which he professed, that he will reign glorious among the 



ACTION OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



579 



master-spirits of heaven, with a crown brighter than most 
of them, radiant with stars that indicate the souls saved by 
his instrumentality. A man of his decided character could 
not lead the life and do the work he did, without running 
counter to the prejudices and passions of many of his 
fellows ; but no such man has ever deserved or obtained a 
fuller share of the respect of all honest men, for the bold- 
ness and candor which always marked his conduct, while 
those who knew him best loved him for all the qualities in 
man that are worthy to be loved. 

" There is no one man whose influence on my mind and 
habits of thought has been so much felt, and to whom I 
owe so much. I never heard a public address by a student 
under his tuition, the most striking parts of which were 
not traceable to the impression of the ideas and modes of 
utterance of Dr. Junkin. But I need not be writing to 
you how highly I estimated his powers of mind, and how 
greatly I admired the goodness and tenderness of his 
heart. ' ' 

A number of public bodies adopted resolutions express- 
ive of their estimation of Dr. Junkin, and of sympathy 
with his surviving family. The General Assembly met in 
Albany the next day after his death, and the following 
paper indicates their action : 

''General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 
the United States of America, met at Albany, New 
York, May 27th, 1868. 

"To George Junkin, Esq., of Philadelphia, Pa., repre- 
senting the family of the late Rev. George Junkin, D.D., 
LL.D., the following minute is respectfully communicated, 
adopted unanimously by this body in a standing vote : 

" 'This General Assembly, having heard, since our ses- 
sions began, that the Rev. Dr. George Junkin has departed 
from this life, record with sadness our sense of loss in his 
death, and our memory of the long and signal service he 
has rendered the church as a teacher, an author, a defender 
of the faith, and an exemplary patriot, in times of trial 
and perplexity, when the foundations of order in the state 
and in the church were overturned. 



5 8o LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNK IN. 

" 'The Stated Clerk is hereby directed to communicate 
this minute to the family of the deceased.' 

"Alexander T. McGill, Stated Clerk." 

The following minute was adopted by the Presbyterian 
Board of Publication at its annual meeting, on Tuesday, 
June 23d, 1868: 

"Whereas, The Rev. George Junkin, D.D., for many 
years a member of this Board, departed this life on the 
24th ult., at the venerable age of nearly seventy-eight 
years ; 

"Resolved, That the Board hereby records its sorrow at 
the sudden departure of this learned, able, and eminent 
servant of God, who, by his long and faithful services in 
the pulpit and in various literary institutions ; by his able 
and intrepid defence of the truth whenever he saw it ex- 
posed to peril; his valuable contributions to our theological 
literature ; the purity and piety of his life ; and his frank, 
sincere, and genial character, had endeared himself greatly 
to the Presbyterian Church he loved so well, and to those 
who were associated with him as members of this Board, 
the interests of which lay near his heart. 

"Resolved, That the Corresponding Secretary commu- 
nicate a copy of this minute to the family of Dr. Junkin, 
and to The Presbyterian. 

" A true copy. 

" William E. Schenck, Corresponding Secretary.'" 

The Trustees of Lafayette College adopted the paper 
which follows : 

"The Trustees of Lafayette College have heard with 
deep sorrow of the death of the Rev. George Junkin, D.D., 
LL.D., and order the following minute to be entered upon 
their records, expressive of their sense of the great loss 
which the Institution has suffered by his removal from 
earth to heaven. 

" Dr. Junkin became President of our College upon its 
organization, in 1832, and continued to administer its 
affairs, and to give instruction in Mental and Moral Phi- 
losophy, till 1 841, when he assumed the Presidency of 
Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. In 1844 he was re- 
called to the Presidency and Professorship, and remained 



HIS PERFECT PURITY. 



58i 



at Easton until 184S, when he removed to Virginia to be- 
come President of Washington College, at Lexington, in 
that State. In 1864 the Trustees appointed him Emeritus 
Professor of Political Philosophy, in which position he 
died, full of years and honors, in May, 1868. 

"To this eminent man of God belongs the praise of 
having been the father and founder of our College. Its 
existence, continuance, and usefulness, under God, are due 
to the devoted piety, great learning, rare aptness to teach, 
indomitable perseverance, unsparing self-denials and sacri- 
fices, unfaltering faith, and labors beyond measure, which 
characterized his administration of its affairs ; and its present 
enlarged prosperity, we receive as the answer to his un- 
ceasing prayers for the College he loved as his life. With 
profound gratitude and ardent love we cherish his memory 
as the earliest and most efficient benefactor of our College, 
who almost literally gave himself for it ; holding back 
nothing of his great talents, or acquisitions, or property, 
or toil, or power with God, that it might be a blessing to the 
church and the world. His earthly reward was to send forth 
from its halls, men whose distinction in various walks of 
life — but especially in the ministry of the gospel — has 
shown the thoroughness of their training, and given to 
Lafayette College a name among the literary institutions 
of the land, in which we have a just pride, and which we 
cannot be too careful to maintain. We bless God for him, 
for what he was, for what he did ; and we give thanks that, 
in the Divine Goodness, he was permitted to live to see 
the College, which is built upon him, Jesus Christ Himself 
being the chief corner-stone, rising to the goodly propor- 
tions which now greet our eyes. ' Having served his genera- 
tion, by the will of God he fell on sleep.' " 

We refrain from further quotations, gratifying as it would 
be to put them on record, as spontaneous tributes to the 
character and the life-work of their venerated subject. 

There was a characteristic of the man whose life is 
commemorated upon these pages, which ought to be men- 
tioned with emphasis. The statement of it may worthily 
close this narrative. He was a man of the most per- 
fect purity of mind and habit : pure in heart, life, 
49* 



S 82 LIFE OF DR. GEORGE JUNKIN. 

and language. The writer can testify, after an intimacy 
of fifty years, that Dr. Junkin was the purest man he ever 
knew. Never, in the course of all his life, and in the 
most familiar and free intercourse which brothers could 
hold, did the lips, the looks, or the conduct of George 
Junkin betray the remotest approach to the domain of 
moral impurity. No word of doubtful modesty, no double- 
entendre, no trifling sallies of wit or jest, ever gave proof 
of the presence in his mind of any thought inconsistent 
with the most unsullied modesty. In this he was the most 
remarkable man known to the writer of this book, — in this 
the most like Jesus. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God. 



end of the memoir. 



APPENDIX. 



AS explanatory of the position occupied by Dr. Junkin 
upon the question of reunion, we append the follow- 
ing paper found in his handwriting, which he presented 
in his Presbytery, and advocated, as the writer is informed, 
with an eloquence and a power of argument worthy of his 
best days. But the union spirit prevailed : 

"Whereas, The General Assembly of 1867 commended 
to the careful consideration of the churches and Presby- 
teries the Report on Reunion of the Old and New School 
branches (Min., p. 362): 

"Therefore, As a partial expression of our opinions, 
be it 

"Resolved — I. That the Terms of said Report, so far as 
known to us, are not satisfactory: 

"1. In that the right and duty of a Presbytery to ex- 
amine each and every intrant from another Presbytery or 
body is surrendered: which right we consider inherent 
and indispensable to the preservation of the church's 
purity. 

"2. In that, by the eighth term, any book is to be rejected 
from our Catalogue against which three members, on either 
side of the Committee, object. Thus, our Digest, Hodge 
on Ephesians, Hodge on Atonement, in short, any book, 
may be stricken off by any three, on either side, of this 
Committee. 

"3. In that other property, stereotype plates, vested 
funds, of Seminaries, of the Boards, etc., are exposed to 
imminent peril. 

"4. And principally, in that the doctrinal basis, as we 
understand, reported by the Joint Committee, is too vague 
and indefinite. The Standards are to be received honestly 
and sincerely, but with such explanations and interpreta- 

(583) 



5§4 



APPENDIX. 



tions as each subscriber may choose to put upon them ; 
that is, each man's own notion is our basis of union. 

"5. In that Congregational churches are to continue 
in full standing, with right of representation in Presbytery 
and Synod, thus controlling, it may readily be, our highest 
court, by electing Commissioners thereto. 

"Resolved — II. That, in our opinion, the cultivation of 
friendly Christian intercourse and ministerial interchanges 
between the two bodies — that is, the ' keeping of the unity 
of the spirit in the bond of peace' — is greatly more im- 
portant and conducive to the practical efficiency of both 
than any mere external, visible, organic union. 

"Ordered, That the Stated Clerk be directed to deliver 
an attested copy of this paper to the Moderator of the next 
General Assembly." 



Extract from Minutes of the Pittsburg Convention, page 17. 

"It may be proper simply to present an outline of the 
system : 

" Thus — 1. The doctrine of Adam's federal headship, or 
representative character, is denied. 

" 2. The doctrine of original sin is denied. 

"3. The doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin to 
his posterity is denied. The rejection of these necessarily 
leads to — 

"4. A denial of Christ's federal headship, or representa- 
tive character. 

"5. A denial of the imputation of his righteousness to 
the believer, as the essential procuring cause of his justifi- 
cation. 

" 6. A rejection of the true, proper, vicarious nature of 
the atonement of Christ." . . 

Page 18. "But these errors do not terminate in simple 
negation. Another system is substituted in room of the gos- 
pel thus rejected. It is the system of human perfectibility: 

"Thus — 1. The doctrine of human ability is held, in- 
volving the principle, and gratuitously assuming it as true, 
that man's moral obligations are measured and bounded by 
his present ability to meet all the requirements of God's law. 

"2. Accordingly, the necessity of the agency, the om- 
nipotent agency of the Spirit of God in the conversion of 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 



585 



the soul, is denied, and conversion is affirmed to be the 
work of the creature. Man regenerates his own soul. The 
Spirit's agency is that of mere moral suasion. Regenera- 
tion is simply an act of the mind, the first in the series of 
holy acts. Faith is an act of the mind, and nothing but 
an act of the mind." 

This memorial was signed by seventy-two ministers and 
thirty-six elders ; among the former, we notice Charles C. 
Beatty and George Marshall. It was referred to a Com- 
*mittee, of which Dr. Elliott was Chairman. 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 

It was the original intention of the author, to insert, in 
an Appendix to the Life of Dr. Junkin, brief sketches of 
the lives of several of his contemporaries who were either 
life-long friends, or who were associated with him in some 
of his more important efforts for the good of Zion and 
the world. For this purpose the writer collected material 
for such notices of Drs. McElroy, Phillips, Knox, McKin- 
ney, Elliott, and others. But the biography itself has 
swelled to such dimensions as to render the execution 
of his plan impracticable ; and he can only find space for 
a tribute to the memory of two of those of whom he 
proposed to write. To this necessity he more cheerfully 
yields because, in the " memorial volume," he has been an- 
ticipated in regard to some of these distinguished brethren, 
and because some of them still survive. 

The beloved brethren whose lives are briefly sketched in 
the following pages are selected as subjects of memoir — 
1. Because no other writer has paid a permanent tribute 
to their memory; 2. Because their names are fragrant 
with godly graces and holy works ; and 3. Because, when 
the writer was a student and in his early ministry, these 
men of God took him by the hand and "showed him no 
little kindness;" and he seeks expression for gratitude, a 
sentiment that, in his heart, never dies. 



5 86 



APPENDIX. 



THE REV. WILLIAM LATTA McCALLA 



Was born on the 25th of November, 1788, in Jessamine 
County, Kentucky. His father was Dr. Andrew McCalla, 
of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who, with his father, Cap- 
tain Wm. McCalla, participated in the War of Independence. 
Dr. McCalla was a surgeon in the service. At the close of 
the war Dr. McCalla removed to Kentucky, and settled at 
Lexington, then the principal town in the State. The 
paternal relatives of the subject of this memoir were all < 
Presbyterians, among whom were the Rev. Wm. Latta of 
the Revolutionary era, and his five sons, all of them eminent 
ministers of the gospel. The maternal ancestry were of 
the excellent but exiled Huguenots ; a descent of which 
Mr. McCalla was justly proud — in the religious sense. 

In 1 81 3 Mr. McCalla was married to Miss Martha A., 
daughter of General Samuel Finley, of Chillicothe, who 
still lives. In 181 1 he began the study of theology, under 
the direction of the Presbytery of West Lexington ; and 
he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Chillicothe, 
into whose bounds he had removed after his marriage. 

He spent the early years of his ministry in Ohio and 
Kentucky ; but the details of his labors, and the several 
fields which he occupied, the writer has not been able to 
ascertain. It is well known that from the first he was a 
man of mark as regards vigor of mind, dignity of presence, 
impressiveness of style, and the eloquence of solemn, earnest 
simplicity. At the close of the War of 1812-1815 General 
Jackson was made commandant of the Southern Depart- 
ment of the United States army, and soon thereafter Mr. 
McCalla was appointed chaplain under him ; and he proved 
himself a faithful, eloquent, and effective preacher in this 
field of labor. 

He was settled as pastor of the church of Augusta, Ken- 
tucky, in 1 819, where he labored for some years. 

Whilst Mr. McCalla was one of the simplest, most 
lucid, earnest, discriminating, powerful, and affectionate 
preachers of the gospel, in its didactic and hortatory forms, 
to whom the writer has ever listened, he excelled in the 
polemic defence of its precious truths. He was a great 
controversialist. That great orator, Henry Clay, of Ken- 
tucky, pronounced him the best debater of his times. The 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 587 

rife and rabid heresies that early sprang up in the West, 
called for a man of Mr. McCalla's power to stand in the 
breach and defend the truth, and he was ever ready to do it. 

Shortly after his settlement in Augusta, having expounded 
the account of our Lord's baptism in Matt, iii., he was 
replied to by a Mr. Vaughn, of the Baptist Church ; and 
this led to some discussion, in which public opinion did not 
accord the victory to Mr. V. Worsted in this encounter, 
the Baptists made arrangements to have the celebrated 
champion of immersion, Alexander Campbell, brought on 
to debate with Mr. McCalla. After some six months' cor- 
respondence, the debate was held, and lasted for seven days. 
Mr. Campbell and his friends, as usual, claimed the victory, 
but the great mass of hearers accorded it to Mr. McCalla. 

In the year 1824 Mr. McCalla was a Commissioner to 
the General Assembly, which met in Philadelphia, and 
whilst there made a decided impression, both upon the 
Assembly and the community, by his fine appearance, his 
terse and vigorous elocution, his attractiveness as a preacher, 
and his power as a debater. 

He still wore the costume of the chaplains of the army; 
and his tall and perfectly erect form, his fine proportions, 
his well- formed head, dark-gray eye, jet-black hair combed 
back from his brow, and his grave and handsome features 
made a strong impression upon every beholder. 

After the rising of the Assembly he engaged in a debate 
with the notorious Abner Kneeland, who had been holding 
his infidel meetings, and challenging everybody to dispute 
with him, in Philadelphia. So crushing was the defeat of 
this unbeliever by Mr. McCalla, that Kneeland was forced 
by public sentiment to leave the city. 

This and his fine pulpit powers drew general attention 
to Mr. McCalla, and the Eighth Presbyterian Church (the 
Scots Church), in Spruce Street near Third, which happened 
then to be vacant, extended a call to him, and he shortly 
afterwards commenced pastoral labors in that congregation. 
This church was originally in connection with the Associate 
Reformed body, and was the one in which Mrs. Junkin 
had been brought up, and in which her father was a leading 
ruling elder. It had been served by such men as Dr. 
James Gray and Dr. Robert McCartee, but was much run 
down at the time Mr. McCalla assumed charge. Under 



5 88 



APPENDIX. 



his ministry it soon revived, and became a strong congre- 
gation. His pastorate there was very successful. The 
writer of this sketch, when a licentiate, sometimes preached 
for him, and the house was crowded both below and in the 
galleries. Mr. Henry McKeen informs us, that soon after 
Mr. McCalla's advent he united with the church along 
with forty-seven others ; and large accessions were frequent 
during his ministry. He had round him in the eldership 
such men as Joseph P. Engles, Alexander Symington, and 
Henry McKeen. 

Mr. McCalla soon took a prominent part in the general 
affairs of the church in Philadelphia. When Mr. Barnes 
was called to the First Church, in 1829, Mr. McCalla was 
one of those who, with the venerable Dr. Green, opposed 
his reception and induction, on the ground of doctrinal 
errors contained in the sermon called " The Way of Salva- 
tion." And throughout the entire controversy beginning 
with that event, Mr. McCalla was a prominent and efficient 
actor. The part he bore in that protracted struggle, which 
ended with the disruption of 1838, has been mentioned in 
the body of this work, and need not be repeated. In the 
Presbytery, the Synod, and the General Assembly, he was 
a man of great power in debate. In 1830 he published "A 
Correct Narrative" of these proceedings, in a pamphlet 
of forty pages, in reply to an erroneous statement previously 
published. 

As a debater he was calm, wary, far-seeing, logical, 
and especially illustrative. His power in pointing an argu- 
ment with an illustrative anecdote, and in making it sting 
with sarcasm, was wonderful ; but he never used the latter 
except in retort. Rarely was he the aggressor in this sort 
of weapon ; but woe to the adversary that threw stones at 
him ; he hurled them back with tenfold momentum. There 
was a calmness in his manner, a smoothness in his tones, 
and an imperturbability of temper which made him all the 
more formidable as an antagonist. When his adversary 
would be boiling, McCalla would be cool as an evening 
zephyr. It was this characteristic that drew from the 
venerable Dr. Miller, on one occasion, after listening to a 
speech from Mr. McCalla in the General Assembly, the 
remark, " Mr. McCalla's speech was as smooth as oil, but 
verily, Mr. Moderator, it was the oil of vitriol." But this 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 



589 



characteristic was observable only when some unfairness or 
lack of Christian magnanimity was shown by his opponents. 
It cannot be denied that this occasional severity in de- 
bate roused a feeling of personal opposition to him with 
some of his brethren of the New School, whilst it was 
also regretted by some of those who acted with him. 
Keenly sensitive to censure, when he thought it undeserved, 
and that it had been incurred when he was in the discharge 
of his duty, he was sometimes chafed by it. And it cannot 
be denied that, on some occasions, his brethren who acted 
with him, and who rejoiced in the power with which he 
defended their cause, failed to sustain him as they might 
have justly done against the charges of undue zeal and 
severity brought by his antagonists. 

In 1 83 1 Mr. McCalla, by invitation of some ministers 
of New Jersey, consented to meet a Rev. Wm. Lane, an 
Arian Baptist, in a debate upon the subject of the Deity of 
Christ. The debate was held in Milford, New Jersey, and 
the Arian proved a pigmy in the hands of a giant. 

After serving the Scots Church with great acceptance 
for ten years, he was induced by some of his brethren to 
go out as a lecturer against Romanism. In the years 1833-4 
the lovely and gifted .Dr. John Breckenridge had engaged 
in a controversy with the Rev. John Hughes, a Catholic 
priest, then of Philadelphia, afterwards Archbishop of New 
York. The controversy was long continued in the news- 
papers, and subsequently renewed in an oral form in a 
debating-society of the young men of Philadelphia. Some 
of the Catholic young men had brought in Mr. Hughes, 
and some of the Protestants invited Mr. Breckenridge. 
The latter being constrained to go to the West on public 
duty before the debate closed, Mr. McCalla was asked to 
take his place. This he did ; and so effectually did he over- 
whelm the arguments of the adroit priest, that many who 
were zealous for the arrest of papal encroachments joined 
in urging Mr. McCalla to go forth as a champion of the 
Protestant cause. A fund was raised ; he accepted the mis- 
sion, and labored effectively for a time in the United States 
and Canada; but the zeal of those who sent him forth did 
not last, or at least was not effective in supplying necessary 
pecuniary aid, and he had to leave this field. 

He took the pastoral charge of the Fourth Presbyterian 
5° 



590 APPENDIX. 

Church, Philadelphia, where he labored for some time with 
great acceptance and usefulness. A large portion of the 
Scots Church congregation, as a surviving officer of it 
informs the writer, left it and went to the Fourth Church, 
from their attachment to Mr. McCalla's person and minis- 
try. The dates of his installation and of his resignation 
we could not ascertain. 

Some time about 1842 he inaugurated a service for the 
French people, who, in considerable numbers, were scat- 
tered about Philadelphia as sheep without a shepherd. 
He gathered a congregation of them, preached to them in 
their own language, and even collected and published for 
their use a small collection of psalms and hymns in French. 
But he found too much indifference among the churches to 
sustain the enterprise. 

In 1840-41 he performed an extensive tour of observa- 
tion and missionary labor in Texas, and, after his return, 
published a book descriptive of his journey and his obser- 
vations. The volume is fraught with stirring incident 
and pithy sentiment, and breathes throughout a spirit of 
piety. 

He was for two terms, about this period of his life, min- 
ister of the church of Bedford, Pennsylvania, at which 
place his widow still resides. But whether his tour in 
Texas was performed before, after, or during his ministry 
at Bedford, the writer of this memoir has not been able to 
ascertain. 

In 1850 he became the pastor of the Union Presbyterian 
Church, Philadelphia, where he continued to labor until 
May, 1854, when he resigned his pastoral charge, with a 
view of entering another field of labor at St. Louis, 
Missouri. 

At the time of his retiring from the pastorate of this 
church, the congregation, in a minute assenting, at his 
urgent request, to the dissolution of the pastoral relation, 
expressed themselves as follows : 

"Resolved, That we express our regret thai circum- 
stances have been such as to lead our beloved pastor to 
this view of his duty ; therefore, 

"Resolved, That our confidence in him is unabated, as 
a sound and able divine, and as a faithful and laborious 
minister of Jesus Christ. His labors among us have awakened 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 



S9i 



feelings of most sincere affection and respect, and we can- 
not part with him without offering grateful testimony to his 
usefulness among us, and we do most earnestly pray that, 
wherever he may go, the great Head of the Church may 
accompany him." 

In dissolving the pastoral relation at his request, the 
Presbytery of Philadelphia, with which he had now been 
connected for thirty years, adopted a minute declaring that 
they " notice with pleasure the feeling of mutual regard 
between the pastor and the people, and express their deep 
interest in Mr. McCalla as a minister of Christ, with whom 
they have been long acquainted, and who has, on several 
occasions, and with distinguished ability, done substantial 
and lasting service to the blessed cause to which he has 
consecrated his life. Presbytery do also express their sin- 
cere affection for Mr. McCalla, on account of his many 
private and social virtues, and do assure him of their best 
wishes and earnest prayers for his usefulness and success in 
the field of his future labors." 

It was whilst pastor of this church that he held the cele- 
brated debate with the infidel, Joseph Barker. 

Of his labors and their results in St. Louis, we have not 
been able to obtain specific information. But, from what 
we know of his ability, his devout godliness, his eloquence 
and zeal, we cannot doubt that there, as in other fields, the 
Lord gave him many seals of his ministry. One incident, 
illustrative of the zeal and the unquailing courage of the 
man, has come to our knowledge. 

The lawless and daring character of the boatmen and 
other habitues of the wharves of St. Louis, especially when 
idle and intoxicated, is proverbial. Mr. McCalla thought 
they formed a class of as unhappy outcasts as ancient or 
modern society could show, and one for whose souls no 
one seemed to care. The sight of them melted his heart, 
and he resolved to make an effort in their behalf, and on 
the next Sabbath to inaugurate his missionary enterprise. 
Some of his pious friends agreed to accompany him, while 
others strongly dissuaded him. Finally all drew back, but 
he persisted. Even the police of the district warned him 
that his life would be in danger, and that they would not 
be able to protect him. He told them he asked no such 
protection. Accordingly, he went to the wharves (or 



592 



APPENDIX. 



levee, as it is called), quite unarmed, and, mounting an 
empty box, in the presence of a few loiterers, began, in 
his clear, sonorous voice, to sing the appropriate hymn : 

" I'm not ashamed to own my Lord, 
Nor to defend His cause." 

The first :ones of his voice brought out, from the dens 
of the vicinity, many of the class of whom he had been 
warned, gathering in a disorderly manner around him. 
And now began an exhibition upon which angels doubtless 
looked with interest. This faithful servant of Christ 
preached the precious gospel in this very seat of Satan. 
The result justified his expectations. Some threatened, 
others applauded, but finally order reigned, and he poured 
tenderly and faithfully into their ears the long - delayed 
news of salvation. When he was about to retire, a sturdy 
and formidable " bully" came up to him, laid his hand on 
Mr. McCalla's arm, thanked him for coming, invited him 
to come again, and pledged protection. 

His last years were spent in affectionate and self-denying 
labors among the slaves of the South, to whom, as well as 
to their educated and refined masters, he was an acceptable 
preacher. Here, as everywhere, he was faithful to his 
Master, to the truth, and to souls ; and we cannot doubt 
that he is now surrounded, in the land of glory, by many, 
both of the lowly and the high-born, the poor and the 
polished, who, in the various fields of his labor, were won 
to Christ, and who now call him blessed. 

Mr. McCalla died at the house of Mrs. Ogden, in Madison 
County, Louisiana, on the 12th of October, 1859, having 
nearly completed his seventy-first year. The disease which 
cut him down was congestive chills, peculiar to that climate. 
His family were absent in Missouri on a visit at the time 
of his death. 

Mr. McCalla, though a man of wondrous work, was a 
constant and systematic student. He was extensively read 
in all useful knowledge, and had marvellous command of 
his knowledge for useful ends. He was master of Hebrew, 
Greek, Latin, and Syriac, and was able to use with ease 
French, Spanish, and German. He was mighty in the 
Scriptures, and in most departments of the lore necessary 
to their illustration. As a preacher of the gospel, he had 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 



593 



few equals in his generation. He was, in the judgment of 
the writer, one of the most perfect verbal critics in ex- 
tempore speech. The right word — the only word of the 
language that perfectly fitted the place — was always at 
command. His style was clear, simple, vigorous, flowing, 
his form tall, erect, commanding, his manner solemn, 
earnest, impressive, and often very tender and affectionate. 
He possessed an exhaustless fund of apposite anecdote, 
which always told. And his deep, reverential, and tender 
piety, which none who knew the man could help but feel, 
gave unction to his utterances. He was a great preacher. 

As a debater he was unexcelled. We will not add to 
what has been written on this subject, except to say, that 
while remarkable in strength of argument, force of illus- 
tration, and power of exposing the weak points of an 
adversary, no man excelled him in the terrors of retort. 
In this he was never ill natured, but always to be dreaded. 
His wit was genuine, keen, and abundant, perhaps to a 
fault, and sometimes irresistible in the grotesqueness of its 
gravity. He rarely smiled, even when others were con- 
vulsed. To give a single specimen. When a distinguished 
preacher had delivered before the Synod a great sermon 
on literalism and the premillennial advent, and the ques- 
tion of publishing it by the Synod was under discussion, 
Mr. McCalla rose, and, with the imperturbable solemnity 
of manner which never left him, said, " Mr. Moderator, if 
we are to be held to the literal interpretation of Scripture, 
that woman to whom the preacher alluded, 'who sitteth 
upon seven mountains,' must have vast sitting capacity." 
It was all he said ; but it ended the discussion in a storm 
of merriment. 

Mr. McCalla was a great man. To quote the language 
of Dr. James Clark, uttered but an hour before this line 
was traced: "Ordinarily, and when not excited by any 
special impulse, he was great ; but when roused, he was a 
giant m intellectual strength." And the conviction that 
God's precious truth was in danger was enough to rouse, 
at any time, all the Hercules within him. And yet this 
man of mighty power was gentle as a woman, and tender 
as Mercy's self in all the duties and the intercourse of 
private and pastoral life. Like most men of pronounced 
opinions and uncompromising integrity, he was often mis- 

5°* 



• 594 APPENDIX. 

understood and often misrepresented; and it is perhaps 
true that he was sometimes too unyielding where the prin- 
ciples involved were not essential ; but even then he was 
conscientious. He did a great work for Christ and his 
church, and we are sure that his reward, through grace, is 
proportionately great. 



REV. ROBERT STEEL, D.D. 

This excellent and beloved minister of Christ was a 
native of Ireland. He was descended from that vigorous, 
godly, and liberty-loving race, the Scotch-Irish; a race 
that for more than two centuries has constituted a very im- 
portant portion of the population of that island, and which 
has given to America a large number of her most valuable 
citizens. He was born of highly respectable and pious 
parents, near the city of Londonderry, a city memorable 
in the history of the struggle for JtVotestant supremacy, 
and the liberties of the British empire. The year of his] 
birth was 1794; but the day we have not been able to ; 
ascertain. 

Mr. Steel pursued his English and, to some extent, his 
classical studies in his native land. His first classical 
teacher was a Mr. Culbertson, who was a graduate of the 
University of Glasgow, and a student of theology, who 
had opened a school not very distant from the residence 
of Mr. Steel's parents. It was the wish of his parents 
that he might be led to enter the ministry, and with this 
view they sent him to study under Mr. Culbertson. 

The following record occurs in a journal kept at the 
time, and found among his papers, and indicates th?t his 
mind had already been turned toward the holy office: 

"I distinctly remember that, before reaching Mr. Cul- 
bertson's residence, I was impressed with the importance 
of the step I was about to take ; as I was aware that my 
parents hoped that I might be led to preach the gospel. I 
paused, and went behind a hawthorn hedge, and prayed to 
God to guide me, and enable me so to study and so to 
act that I might be counted worthy to be put into the 
ministry." 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 



595 



An elder brother, the late John Steel, Esq., had emi- 
grated to America some years before this, and was in a 
prosperous mercantile business in Philadelphia. Mr. John 
Steel was a man of great moral excellence, probity, and 
generosity of character. He sent a pressing invitation to 
Robert to come to America and pursue his studies in this 
country. The invitation, with the consent of his parents, 
was accepted; and in 1811, in his seventeenth year, the 
younger brother came to Philadelphia, became a member 
of his brother's family, and continued under his care until 
his education was completed. 

After arriving in America, Mr. Steel spent one year in 
"Gray and Wylie's Academy," then kept in Locust Street. 
In 181 2 he entered rhe college at Princeton, and remained 
in that institution until he graduated, which was probably 
in 181 5 ; for he entered the Seminary of Dr. Mason, in 
New York, to prosecute his theological studies, in 1816. 

There he and Dr. Junkin became acquainted ; and a 
friendship was formed which endured through life. Their 
correspondence was frequent and voluminous, as letters 
still on file attest. And, as has been mentioned in the 
body of this work, Mr. Steel had more agency than any 
other individual in bringing Dr. Junkin into the field of 
his chief life-work, — education. 

Mr. Steel was licensed to preach the gospel in April, 
1818, by the Presbytery of New York, and whilst still at- 
tending upon the instructions of Dr. Mason, was for some 
time employed by the Young Men's Missionary Society of 
that city. This engagement appears to have continued 
for a season after he left the Seminary. When it ceased, 
he came to Philadelphia, and labored for a time in a city 
mission. 

He was then for a short time employed by a female 
Missionary Society to labor in Moyamensing, in which 
service he continued until called to Abington. In this 
ancient congregation, which in earlier times had enjoyed 
the labors of such men as the Treats and the Tennents, 
Mr. Steel was ordained and installed in November, 1819, 
by the Presbytery of Philadelphia. 

This was his first and his only pastoral charge. There 
he labored faithfully and successfully for about forty-three 
years, until 1862, when his Master came, released him 



596 



APPENDIX. 



from his earthly cares and labors, and took him to a higher 
service above. 

During all these years of constant toil in the vineyard, 
Mr. Steel was seldom or never interrupted by bodily sick- 
ness. He possessed a remarkably vigorous constitution, 
and could endure an amazing amount of labor. 

A little below the medium height, robustly built, closely 
and firmly knit, of florid complexion and sanguine tem- 
perament, he was the very embodiment of vigorous activity. 
Possessed of a strong and well-balanced mind, great warmth 
and geniality of affection, and a cheerfulness of heart that 
seemed rarely interrupted, he was a most agreeable com- 
panion and loving pastor. His manner in the pulpit, 
the prayer-meeting, and the family visit was ardent, 
earnest, tender, often tearful. His mind was not marked 
by any extraordinary vigor, grasp, or originality, but he 
was a clear, sound, effective thinker ; and as his great and 
life-long aim was to " know nothing among his people save 
Jesus Christ and him crucified," he was better than a 
great preacher — he was an earnest, instructive, effective, 
useful one. And the fact that he served an intelligent 
people for forty-three years, and that he interested them 
as much in his last years as in his first, is a eulogy that can 
be pronounced over few. 

During part of his ministry he added to his pastoral 
toils the superintendence of a seminary for the instruction 
of youth. His first school was a classical and mercantile 
school for boys and young men. Afterward he super- 
intended the Abington Female Seminary for some years; 
and in both he and his family, and the teachers under 
his control, contributed largely to the interests of higher 
education. By this instrumentality he was the means of 
bringing into the ministry some very valuable men. The 
Rev. Alfred Ryors, D.D., President of Indiana University, 
the Rev. George D. Stewart, and the Rev. Joseph Stevens, 
may be named among the number. 

In the agitations that resulted in the disruption of the 
Presbyterian Church, Dr. Steel occupied a peculiar posi- 
tion. Thoroughly sound in doctrine, decidedly opposed 
to the New Theology, and never faltering when anything 
was to be done which he could do for the interests of ■ 
orthodoxy, his kindly and genial disposition, and friend- 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 



597 



liness of manner, retained the affection of the New School 
brethren longer than did the Old School men who lived 
in the city. When the first troubles connected with Mr. 
Barnes arose, his distance from the city, and his gentleness 
of disposition, kept him in more pleasant relations with 
the New School brethren than were the city pastors. 
And when the second trial of Mr. Barnes was about to be 
commenced, he was in a position to be of essential service 
to the cause, and to his old friend and fellow-student, Dr. 
Junkin. 

Accordingly, it was through his agency that Dr. J. tabled 
the charges, not being able to be present himself, on ac- 
count of his imperious engagements at the College. A few 
extracts from the correspondence of Dr. J. and Mr. Steel, 
will throw some additional light upon the motives of the 
one, and the agency of the other. 

In a letter, dated Lafayette College, March 9th, 1835, 
after some business statements relative to College affairs, 
Dr. Junkin adds : 

" Ought not Brother Barnes to be tried on his Notes on 
Romans ? I have been reading them. He is sadly astray. 
There will be no difficulty in showing that he denies the 
doctrines of Adam's federal headship, of Christ's federal 
headship, of the covenants of works and of grace, of im- 
putation of Adam's sin, and of Christ's righteousness. 
He makes justification, just as Dewy did-, a mere act of 
pardon, and that a sovereign act, like the Priestleyans. 
Christ's obedience to the law, for his people, he never 
brings into view at all. Man's inability he seems to deny. 
He sets up the doctrine of the Confession, states it dis- 
tinctly, and goes on to refute it. 

" Now, as Mr. Alexander Henry often told me, this is 
the tender, the turning point. For myself, I feel that he 
who takes from me the righteousness of Jesus strips me of 
my hope ; he who robs me of all covenant security sweeps 
away my consolations. 

" Will the church bear such sacrilege? Ought the Pres- 
byterian Church to tolerate it ? Is there no man who will 
throw himself into the breach, and bring up the doctrinal 
question on its naked merits ? Has not God opened a door 
here, by which the real Old School and the Orthodox 
Moderates must both enter the citadel together, bound, 



59 g APPENDIX. 

under the oath of God, to defend it or to perish in its 
ruins? ' Who is on the Lord's side? Who?' 

"I declare, my dear brother, the question is a solemn 
one to me. I feel that I have some of the talents necessary 
for such a work ; I am conscious that I lack others. But, 
all things considered, the question with me is not of ab- 
stract duty, but of prudence. Were I simply a pastor, there 
would be no question except this, ' Will no one else do it?' 
But how would it affect Lafayette ? This question I ought 
seriously to consider. If you will say you will prosecute, 
you will put an end to my troubles on the whole matter. 
Will you ? If not, how do you think my doing so would 
affect the College ? Brothers Gray and Candee have given 
their opinion that it would not prove injurious. 

" My own hope is, that a prosecution would lead to a 
settlement of great principles, and thus to peace. I think 
it would unite all real Presbyterians. . . . Let me 
have your opinion. 

"Your brother, 

"Geo. Junkin." 

To this Mr. Steele replied as follows : 

"Abington, March nth, 1835. 

" Dear Brother, — The great importance of your letter 
would make me desire more leisure and consideration to 
answer it. But, as J. is to go to Easton in the morning, I 
will give you briefly my views. That it is the duty of 
some one to come forward and take the constitutional 
steps in this matter I cannot doubt for a moment, from 
your representation of the dangerous errors contained in 
the book. ... If I possessed one-half of the quali- 
fications which you do to conduct such a prosecution, I 
would feel it a privilege as well as a duty to go forth in 
the strength of the Lord to the conflict. As to injury to 
Lafayette, I am almost sure it can have no effect. But I 
doubt whether, even if it were otherwise, you should hesi- 
tate for a moment. Go on, then, dear brother ; you will 
have the countenance and the prayers of hundreds, and, 
above all, the approval of the Master. I think if you can- 
not get it issued before the Assembly, it might be well not 
to commence until after the Assembly. 

"Yours truly, 

"R. Steel." 



BRIEF MEMOIRS. 599 

Again, in a letter dated 

" Philadelphia, March 20th, 1835. 

" Dear Brother, — The Second (Affinity) Presbytery- 
have just determined to hold their regular stated meeting 
on next Monday morning at 9 o'clock. Whether this was 
done to get over your business, I know not. But this I 
know, that if so they will be disappointed. By the leave 
of Providence, I will be here on Monday, and present the 
charges and your letter, and then ask for the ten days, to 
give you an opportunity to come down. I must close, but 
will write to Brother Gray from Abington to-night. Of 
course I cannot be at David's* ordination. May the Lord 
be with him and the Presbytery. 

"Yours affectionately, 

"R. Steel." 

Again : 

" Philadelphia, March 23d, 1835. 

" Dear Brother, — As I feared and expected, they have 
given your business the go-by for the present. The gen- 
eral cry was, ' We cannot entertain charges when the accuser 
is not present.' I plead for a day to be named, that you 
might be present ; but they refused, and finally adjourned, 
to meet at the call of the Moderator. He promised to let 
me know when that will be ; but I fear that the whole will be 
shifted off until after the Assembly. 

" I will send you a sketch of the debate, so soon as I 
can write it out. I think a good impression was made. 
They tried to make out that your charges were the result 
of a caucus, but I exposed the fallacy of that. But I must 
close. 

"Yours affectionately, 

"R. Steel." 

A week later he writes to his friend, the late Dr. John 
Gray, of Easton : 

" I suppose you heard, from Dr. Junkin, the result of the 
first meeting on his business. The Presbytery is to meet 
again on Thursday morning, April 2d, at 9 o'clock. I un- 
derstand the Stated Clerk was requested to inform Dr. J. of 
this fact. But, lest it should not be done, I deemed it 



David X. Junkin, at whose ordination he had been invited to assist. 



6qo APPENDIX. 

best to ask you to let him know, as he will be expected 
by the Presbytery. Although that body, I fear, will not 
permit him to prosecute, yet, as a powerful sensation was 
produced in many minds by their refusal to entertain the 
matter, they may drop all opposition, and let the trial go 
on immediately. Let the doctor be prepared, at any rate. 
I hope you will come with him. It will never do to let 
him appear alone among the new light brethren. Come 
with him to our house on Wednesday. ... I do not 
think I can venture down again alone." 

In a letter to Dr. Junkin, dated the 24th of March, he 
gave a graphic sketch of the scenes in the Presbytery, 
alluded to in his letter of the night before, but the report 
is too voluminous to insert here. Dr. Ely's speech, Mr. 
Barnes', Mr. Dodge's, and Mr. Steel's own remarks, are 
sketched in brief, and the various expedients by which, as 
he supposed, they sought to avoid the issue. 

In this whole matter, it was shown that, with all his 
kindness of heart and geniality of manner, when he sup- 
posed God's precious truth was endangered, Dr. Steel was 
firm, zealous, and persistent in the discharge of duty. 
When Mrs. junkin departed this life, Dr. Steel addressed 
to his life-long friend a letter of condolence, of the ten- 
derest character, which called forth a response in which his 
afflicted friend poured forth all his heart. These letters are 
beautiful specimens of affecting Christian sympathy, but we 
have not space to insert them. These men of God have 
renewed, we cannot doubt, in the higher life, that close 
friendship which, for so many years, sweetened their cares 
in this. 



INDEX. 



Abolition controversy, 436. 
Academy, Milton, 103, 105. 
Act and Testimony, 257. 

not a test, 265. 

opposed, 264. 
Address Bible Society, 92. 
Afflictions, 303, 505. 
Agricultural labor, 107, 509. 
Alarm caused by acts of 1834, 256. 
Alexander, Dr. A., 359, 364, 367, 
388. 
opinion of Lafayette, 388. 

Dr. J. W., 360, 409. 
Alleghany City in 18 12, 49. 
American Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions, 139 ; seek control, 225. 
Ancestry, Dr. Junkin's, 12, 18, 26. 
Anderson, Dr. W. C, 224. 

Samuel C, 370, 
Appeal of Mr. Barnes to Assembly, 
307. 

of Dr. Junkin, to which Synod, 
295. 

to Synod of Philadelphia, 297. 

trial of, at York, 301. 

sustained by Synod, 334. 
Argument, Dr. Junkin's, in 1836, 

322. 
Armstrong, Dr. George, 493. 

Rev. John, 488. 

Richard, D.D., 105. 
Assembly, General: 

Acts of 1837, 366 ; opposition to, 
378. 

of 1826, 138; of 1827, 

of 1831, 227; of 1832, 232, 

of 1833, 244; of 1834, 247 

of 1835, 272; of 1836, 318. 

of 1837, 366; of 1838, 389. 

of 1844, 455; of 1845, 469. 

of 1838, after division, 395. 

of 1861, 532. 

of 1862, 542, 



Assembly, General, omnipotence of, 
opposed to, 543. 
powers of, 236, 543. 
Associate Reformed Church, formed, 
26. 
mission, plans of, 74. 
Auchincloss, Hugh, 349. 

Bacon, Dr. Leonard, letter of, 216. 
Baird, Rev. T. D., 224, 265,338, 364. 

Samuel J., D.D., history quoted, 
passim. 
Banks, Hon. C, 313. 
Baptism, Dr. Junkin's, 29. 

lax practice of, 129. 
action about, 131. 

Romish, 473. 

treatise on, 558. 
Baptist controversy, 109. 
Barber, Rev. D. M., 105, 128. 
Barnes, Rev. Albert, 145, 146. 

his first trial, 200. 

second trial, 276. 

letters concerning, 597. 

Notes on Romans, 276. 

pamphlet about, 210. 

condemned by Synod, 307. 

publishes defence, 308. 

refuses to plead, 304. 

his vantage, 310. 

trial before Assembly, 319. 

his reductio ad odium, 325. 

result of trial accounted for, 336. 
Barnes, Rev. J. C, 416. 
Baxter, Dr. Geo., 364, 368, 371, 372. 

Richard, 197. 
Beatty, Rev. Mr., 226. 
Beecher, Dr. L., 99, 239, 345. 
trial of, 240. 

Rev. Edward, 393. 
Bellville, Rev. J. L., 250. 
Beman, Dr. N. S. S., 208, 212, 391. 

characterized, 367. 

c (601) 



Go2 



INDEX. 



Beman, Dr. N. S. S., secret circular 

of, 245. 
Bethune, Dr. G. W., 63. 

Mrs., 63. 
Bible labors of Dr. Junkin, 92, 112. 

Society, Susquehanna, 92. 
Biblical Repertory, 261, 263, 363, 534. 
Bishop, Dr., 406. 
Blackburn, Dr. Gideon, 221. 
Blythe, Rev. Dr., 213, 268, 360. 
Board of Missions, Domestic, origin 
of, 188. 

war on, 213. 

saved, 216. 
Board of Missions, Foreign, organ- 
ized, 376. 
Boardman, Dr. H. A., 294, 297. 
Boards, controversy about, 208, 275. 
Boat on sand-bar, 334. 
Books, can they be condemned? 202, 

238, 282. 
Bradford, Thomas, Esq., 291, 293, 

297. 
Brainerd, David, 220. 
Brandywine, battle of, 14. 
Breckenridge, Dr. John, 222, 305, 
3°7. 349. 3 6 3- 

Robert J., D.D., 219, 227, 233, 
257. 265, 365, 368. 

Dr. W. L., 340. 
Breed, Dr. W. P., 566. 
Brown, Rev. I. V., 257, 265. 

his book, 360. 

his testimony, 393. 

John, Ossawatomie, 511. 



Calhoun, Rev. Philo, 493. 
Call to Mercer, 81. 

to Newburg, 72. 

to Newville, 70. 
Calvinism prompts to effort, 19. 

in New England, 182. 
Cameronian eloquence, 267, 272. 
Campbell, Dr. A. D., 64, 71, 72, 224. 
Casuistry perverted, 69. 
Cattell, Rev. Dr., 487, 566. 
Chambers, Hon. George, incident 
of, 17. 

Rev. John, 74, 277. 
Characteristics of Assembly of 1836, 
318. 

of Assembly of 1837, 368. 

of Dr. Junkin as a preacher, 121. 

of his manners, 118. 

of his piety, 124. 



Characteristics of Dr. Junkin's pur- 
ity, 581. 
Charge to Mr. Knox, 475. 
Christian Spectator, 211. 

spirit of Dr. Junkin attested by 
Second Presbytery, 296 ; by 
Mr. Barnes, 315 ; by " The 
Presbyterian," 316. 
Church a missionary society, 187. 
Cincinnati Conference, 213, 215, 226. 
Clark, Dr. James, 566. 
Cleland, Dr., 364. 
Cleveland, Rev. J. P., 364, 367, 373, 

390- 
Cloud, Rev. John, 116. 
Coffin, J. H., Prof, 469. 
College, Lafayette, history of, 115, 
150, 160. 
Washington, 482, 492, 495. 
Colonization, 452. 
" Commissions, The Two," 556. 
Committee to conferwith Mr. Barnes, 
203. 
of compromise, 246. 
of correspondence, 1836, 449. 

work of, 357, 359, 363. 
on business of Convention, 268. 
on doctrine, 274. 
on Memorial, 1835, 268, 274. 
"Committeemen," 182, 212. 
Communion, Catholic, 69. 
Confederate prisoners, labors among, 

546, 548, 557. 
Conference, O. S., 1834,257; 1836, 

348. 
Congregationalism, origin of, 195. 
lost by " Plan of Union," 181. 
Constitution and the war, 561. 
Contrast, Dr. Ely's, 351. 
Controversy, Baptist, 109. 
benefits of, 399. 
evils of, 397. 

history of, difficult to write, 8. 
Semi- Pelagian, 138. 
Socinian, 108. 
Contumacy of Assembly's Presby- 
tery, 302, 304. 
Convention, Philadelphia, 1837,363. 
Pittsburg, 1835, 260, 267. 
prototype of, 245. 
Covenant, New Year's, 119. 
Cross, Rev. A. B., 383. 
Culbertson, Dr. fames, 268. 

Rev. Dr., 28". 
Cumberland County, birthplace, 13. 
patriotism of, 24. 



INDEX. 



603 



Cunningham, Wm., Prof., 385, 416. 
Curtin, Governor Andrew G., 512. 
Cuvler, Dr. C. C.,359, 364, 367, 371. 
' Dr. Theo. L„ 416. 

Dabney, Prof., 493. 
Dashiel, Rev. Mr., 290. 
Davidson, Lawyer, 524. 
Debate on " excision," 372. 
Decision of character not obstinacy, 

331,434- 
Defenders of the faith apt to be re- 
proached, 398. 
Delaware, Fort, labors in, 557. 
Departures from Easton, 141, 410. 
Derry, siege of, 12. 
Dewitt, Dr. W. R., 64. 
Dickey, Rev. E., D.D., 75. 

Dr. J. Miller, 105, 118, 139. 
Dickinson, Rev. Baxter, 367, 371. 
Disruption of church proposed, ami- 
cable, 371. 

causes of, 186, 357. 

history of, 389. 
Dobbin, Dr. Alexander, 28. 
Doctrinal issues to be settled, 215. 
Duffield, Dr. George, 70, 192, 289, 
302. 

case of, 364, 367. 
Duffield, Rev. G., Sr., 220. 
Duncan, Rev. J. M., 75, 76. 

Easton, second church of, 477. 
Ecclesiastical organization, 223, 227. 
Education, general, Dr. J.'s labors 
in, 158, 385. 
idea of, 153. 
philosophy of, 159. 
zeal for, 153. 
Education Society, American, 138, 

139, 185, 190, 375. 
" Educator" established, 384. 
Effects of church controversy, 397, 

402. 
Elder question, 457. 
Eldership, rally of, 364. 
" Elective Affinity" Presbytery, his- 
tory of, 228, 233, 246. 
dissolved, 376. 

Synod of Delaware formed, 248. 
Elective Affinity principle, tendency 

of, 250. 
Elliott, Dr. Charles, 485. 

estimate of character, etc., 568. 
Elliott, Dr. David, 273, 364, 366, 368, 
389- 



Elliott, Dr. David, estimate of char- 
acter, labors, etc., 577. 
Ely, Dr. E. S., 112, 146, 201, 210, 229, 

232, 276. 
Emancipation, 446. 
Emigration from Ireland, 12; from 

Cumberland, 36. 
Engles, Joseph P., 71. 

Rev. Dr.W. M., 71, 235, 247, 365. 
Episode in Assembly of 1836, 320, 

334- 
Errors introduced, 183. 
increase, 276. 
not generally held by New 

School, 199. 
set forth in Memorial, 270. 
Eustace, Rev. Thomas, 287. 
Ewing, Hon. Nathaniel, 313, 365, 

370. 
Examination of intrants, right of, 

229, 232, 275. 
Excision of Synods, 372. 
Experience, Dr. Junkin's religious, 

47- 
Exodus from Virginia, 518. 
Explanations, Mr. Barnes', 344. 

Fairchild, Rev. A. G., 268. 
Faithfulness of sacred narrative proof 

of inspiration, 6. 
Family, Dr. Junkin's, 11, 26. 

worship enjoined, 132. 
Farm, Turbot, 107. 
Farewell hymn, 410. 

sermons, 141, 410. 

to Easton, 410. 
Fasting and prayer, day of, 268. 
Father, Dr. Junkin's, correspondence 
with, 43. 

early history of, 13. 

education of, 24. 
Findley, Hon. John, 26, 36. 

letter of, 82. 

Hon. William, 34. 
Firmness under opposition, 102. 
Fishburn, Clement D., 578. 

George, 505. 

Junius M., 504. 
Fisher, Dr. Samuel, 361. 
Flags burned, 520. 
Francis, Hon. Wm. M., 52. 
Franklin Society, 510. 
Free Church of Scotland, address to 

commissioners of, 461. 
Friendships, seminary, 64. 
Fullerton, Hon. David, 365. 



604 



INDEX. 



Galloway, Rev. James, 47, 64, 71. 

Rev. J. Mason, 105, 117. 
Gaston, Rev. Daniel, 105, 115. 
Gazley, Rev. Sayers, 250. 
George, Archibald, 268, 313. 
Germantown, Dr. Junkin arrives at, 

142 ; leaves, 144. 
Gilbert, Rev. Dr., 247. 
Gillett's History quoted, passim, 
Graham, Rev. Wm., 22. 
Gray, Rev. Dr. James, 57. 

Rev. Dr. John, 404. 
Green, Dr. Ashbel, 202, 247, 254, 

268, 368. 

Handy, Dr., 557. 
Hepburn, J. C., M.D., 105, 117. 
" Heresy," the word claimed to be 
essential in charges, 289, 292. 

this position denied, 289, 292. 
Hill, Major-General D. H., 493. 

Rev. Dr., 273. 
Hillyer, Rev. Dr., 214. 
History of Barnes' second trial, 277. 

of missions in church, 188. 

of the Barnes troubles, 200. 
Hoff, Rev. Brogun, 146. 
Hoge, Dr. James, 317, 340. 
Home Missionary Society, Amer- 
ican, 138, 185, 208, 213. 

deprecated by Assembly, 375. 
Hood, Rev. Thomas, 87, 89. 
Hope Mills, 36, 38. 
Hopkinsianism, 198. 
Humble labors, 559. 
Hyer, Garrett, 62. 

Inauguration, Oxford, 416; Lexing- 
ton, 490. 

Independence, incidents of, 238. 

Indians, struggle with, 21 ; escapes 
from, 22. 

Installation at Milton, 89. 

Integrity of national union vs. aboli- 
tion, 440. 

Jackson, General Thomas J., 496, 
5°3. 552, 553; can e, at Get- 
tysburg, 550; letter to Dr. 
Junkin, 553. 

Jefferson College, origin of, 41. 
Mr. Junkin enters, 40. 

Jessup, Colonel William, 215, 367, 
37i. 372. 

Johns, Dr. H. V. D., 416. 

Journey to New York in 1813, 59. 



Junkin, Hon. Benjamin, 26, 455. 
Junkin, D. X., 26, 50, 117, 130, 143, 
320. 

interview with Dr. Beecher, 345. 

labors in education, 385. 
Junkin, E. D., Rev., 496, 502, 504, 

5°7- 
Junkin, Dr. George: 

address of, at Rutgers College, 
508. 

argument in Assembly of 1836, 
322. 
characterized, 352. 

as an agriculturalist, 107, 509. 

as a debater, 369. 

as an educator, 506. 

as a preacher, 540. 

author of Memorial of 1835, 268. 

award in favor of, 490. 

baccalaureates, 433. 

baptism, 29. 

birth, 23. 

called to Newville, 70 ; to New- 
burg, 72; to Milton, 88; to 
Mercer, 81; to Manual Labor 
Academy, 140; to Lafayette 
College, 150; to Miami Uni- 
versity, 407, 412 ; to Lafayette 
College, 467 ; to Washington 
College, 482. 

Canal Street Church, supplies, 
545- 

Christian spirit attested by Sec- 
ond Presbytery, 296 ; by Mr. 
Barnes, 315 ; by " The Presby- 
terian," 316. 

college labors, 404. 

" Commissions, The Two," 556 

complaint against Second Pres- 
bytery, 285. 

death, 565. 

" Declaration and Testimony' 
men, views of, 543. 

disadvantages in the Barnes 
trial, 310. 

documents written by, 231, 235. 

exodus from Virginia, 518. 

fairness in the Barnes trial, 291. 

fellowship with brother minis- 
ters, 507. 

funeral, 567. 

Hebrews, work on, 564. 

in Assembly of 1835, 272. 

1836, 319. 

1837, 3«9- 
1862, 542. 



INDEX. 



605 



Junkin, Dr. George, in Synod at 
York, 301. 
in Synod of New Jersey, 396. 
itinerates, 70. 

joins North Presbytery, 94. 
labors among Confederate pris- 
oners, 548, 550, 557. 
for the Union, 512, 545, 

546. 
in college, 151. 
in education cause, 384. 
in hospitals, 548, 557. 
in pulpit, 435, 540. 
LL.D., Rutgers College, 508. 
Magdalen, labors at, 559-565. 
Moderator of Synod, 228, 234. 

of Assembly, 455. 
object in the Barnes trial at- 
tained, 344. 
obnoxious to New School, and 

why, 185. 
opens Assembly of 1845, 469. 
parliamentary tact, 273. 
patriotic labors, 545, 546. 
persecutions, 312. 
preaching continuously, 540, 

559- 
purity of character, 581. 
rather be right than popular, 

186. 
refuses to publish his argument 

pending the Barnes trial, 308. 
reported death, 415. 
residence in Philadelphia, 527. 
resigns at Lafayette College, 484. 
at Washington College, 524. 
reunion meeting with brothers, 

558. 
Sanctification, work on, 558. 
speech on abolition, 446, 
Vindication, 308. 
visits birthplace, 536, 539. 
war, relations to civil, 524, 561, 

562. 
Washington, administration of, 

494. 
Widows' Asylum, labors in, 559, 

565- 
Junkin, Captain John, 26, 36, 52. 
Junkin, John Miller, M.D., 493, 496, 
Junkin, Joseph, 1st, 11. 
death of, 28. 
Joseph, 2d (the father), 13, 22. 
Joseph, 3d, 26, 46. 
Joseph, 4th (son of Dr.), 484, 

493. 494- 



Junkin, Julia R., 57, 77, 85, 118. 

death of, 497. 
Justification, Junkin on, 383. 

Kennedy, Hon. James, 313. 
Kincaid, Rev. Dr. E., 109. 
Kingsbury, Rev. Mr., 375. 
Kirk, Dr. E. N., 214. 
Kirkpatrick, Dr. David, 103, 133. 
Knox, Rev., J. H. Mason, D.D., 349, 
473. 486. 
Memorial sermon, 527-532. 
Knox, Rev. John, D.D., 57, 64, 542. 
Kuhn, Prof. James I., 152, 388. 

Lafayette College, origin of, 115; 
Mr. Junkin elected president, 
150; struggles and difficulties, 
381,407, 479; in 1844, 369. 

Laird, Rev. Matthew, 105, 114, 116. 

Lane Seminary, 239. 

Latta, Dr. Wm, 203, 317, 368. 

Leach, Rev. Mr., 272. 

Lenox, James, Esq., 268, 313, 340, 
349. 370- 
Robert, Esq., 361. 

Letters, files of, 65. 

of Rev. J. W. Moore, 121 ; 
Joseph Junkin, Sr., 43 ; George 
Junkin, 53 ; J. Findley, 82 ; Mr. 
Junkin to Milton Church, 82 ; 
to a physician, 101, 133 ; of Dr. 
Bacon, 216; to Princeton pro- 
fessors, 262 ; Dr. Junkin to Mr. 
Barnes, 278 ; Mr. Barnes to Dr. 
Junkin, 280; Dr. Junkin to 
Second Presbytery of Philadel- 
phia, 282 ; Dr. Junkin to Mr. 
Grant, 286 ; Mr. Eustace to Dr. 
Junkin, 287; Dr. Junkin to Mr. 
Grant, 297 ; Dr. Duffield to 
Synod of Philadelphia, 302 ; Mr. 
Eustace to Dr. Junkin, 303 ; to 
the Presbyterian, from a mem- 
ber of the Synod of New Jersey, 
313; to the churches of Christ 
throughout the world, by Gen- 
eral Assembly of 1837, 377 ; 
Dr. Junkin to Mr. Steel, 382; 
Dr, Junkin to Mrs. Preston, 501, 
505 ; to E. D. Junkin, 506 ; Dr. 
Junkin to Governor Curtin, 512 ; 
Hon. Eli K. Price to Dr. Junkin, 
515 ; from Faculty of Washing- 
ton College, 524; Gen. Jackson 
to Dr. Junkin, 553. 



6o6 



INDEX. 



License refused and granted, 68. 
Lincoln, Abraham, opinion of, 443, 

514. 546. 
Lindslev, Dr. Philip, 273. 
Lord, Dr. J. C, 473. 
Lowrey, John, 557. 
Lowrie, Hon. Walter, 370. 
Lowry, Rev. A. M., 488. 

McAuley, Dr. Thomas, 224, 367. 
McCalla, Rev. W. L., 203, 210, 

218, 244, 247, and Appendix, 

586. 
McCartee, Dr. Robert, 62. 
McCartney, Hon. Washington, 469. 
McCay, C. F., LL.D., 104, 143. 
MacD'ill, Rev. Dr., 64. 
McDonough, Commodore, his fleet, 

72. 
John, of New Orleans, 442. 
McDowell, Dr. John, 223. 

Dr. William A., 273, 349. 
McElroy, Joseph, D.D., 60, 64, 66, 

69, 70, 340, 349, 541. 
McFarland, Dr. Francis, 349, 363, 

507. 524- 
McGill, Dr. A. T., 473. 
McKeen, Henry, Esq., 200, 597. 

Thomas, Esq., 317. 
McKinney, David, D.D., 317. 
McLean, Dr. Charles G., 57, 64, 

83- 

McMillan, Dr. John, 40, 47. 
McPherson (Elder), 268. 
Magdalen, labors at, 559. 
Magraw, Dr. James, 268. 
Manual Labor Academy, system of, 
151- 
Dr. Junkin chosen principal, 

146. 
embarrassments of, 142. 
Marr, Rev. Phineas B., 105. 
Marriage engagement, 77 ; consum- 
mated, 85. 
of the father, 17. 
of sisters, 48. 
Marshall, Dr. George, 105. 
Martyrdom without the stake, 311. 
Mason, Dr. Erskine, 362, 390. 
Mason, J. M., D.D., characterized, 
60, 64. 
his method of instruction, 60. 
Mr. Junkin enters his seminary, 

52. 
visits Europe, 66. 
Mather, Increase, 197. 



Matthew xviii. 15, 16, meaning of, 

290. 
Matthews, Dr. J. M., 60. 
Mercer Blues, 49. 

Memorial and Testimony of 1837, 
3°5- 
on missions, 213. 
Pittsburg, 1835, 269, 273. 
Western, its history, 250. 
its treatment, 253. 
Methodists and Ohio Colleges, 423. 
Miami University founded, 406. 
controversy, 421. 
discipline in, 420. 
Dr. Junkin elected president, 
407, 412. 
" Middle men," 245, 263. 
Miller, John, Esq., sketch of, 85. 
Miller, Dr. Samuel, 224, 337, 338, 
363- 
report on Barnes' case, 206. 
testimony in court, 392. 
Miller, Dr. Samuel, Jr., 496. 
Milton, Pa., installed at, 89. 
letter to, 82. 
parting scenes, 141. 
pastorate, 87, 92, 94. 
state of religion at, 88. 
visit to, 79. 
Milton Academy, 103. 
Missionary Societies: 

American Board, 139, 221. 
United Foreign, 221. 
Western Foreign, formed, 224. 
Missions, Domestic, Board of, origin 
of, 188. 
war upon, 213. 
Foreign, history of, 220. 

conflicting views about, 220. 
Montfort, Elder John, 250. 

Rev. Francis, 250. 
Montgomery, Gen. Daniel, 23, 92. 

Rev. Dr., 268. 
Moore, Rev. J. W., 105, 121. 
Moral law, 417. 
Morrison, Rev. James, 507. 
Mother of Dr. Junkin, her parentage, 
15; education, 24; escape 
from massacre, 15 ; peace- 
maker, 25 ; religious influ- 
ence, 35; death, 50. 
Motives not to be impeached, 324, 
336. 

Navarino, battle of, 125. 
Neill, Rev. Wm., D.D., 148. 



INDEX. 



607 



Nevin, Dr. Alfred, 518. 

Nevins, Dr. Wm., 222. 

New Divinity, rise and progress, 183. 

New England once Calvinislic, 182. 

preachers from, 184. 
" New measures," 186. 
"New School" leaders Congrega- 

tionalists, 192. 
Newton, Rev. Thomas, 353. 

estimate of character, etc., 570- 

575- 
Newville, residence at, 33 ; called 

to, 70. 
Niagara, incident of, 45. 
" No !" the one, 273. 
Normal School, Dr. Junkin's, the 

first, 386, 405. 
Northumberland Missionary Society, 

129. 
Northumberland Presbytery, Mr. 

Junkin joins, 94. 
resolutions of, 131. 
" Northwestern Presbyterian," arti- 
cles in, 543. 
Notes on Romans quoted, 342. 

Object of the Barnes trial attained, 

344- 
Objections to Dr. Junkin as prose- 
cutor, 290. 
answered, 328. 
" Old School" lacked tact, 211 ; dif- 
fered about measures, 359. 
Oliver, Captain Walter, 46, 160. 
Opinion, history of, important, 194. 
Ordination, Mr. Junkin's, 75. 
question, 457. 
vows, 76. 
Owen, Ruling Elder, 268. 

Painter, Dr. Joseph, 133. 
Parke, Mrs. Dr., 120. 
Parting from Milton, 141. 

last, from Lafayette, 485. 

of the brothers, 52. 
Pastoral habits, 113. 

letter of Assembly of 1838, 395. 
Pastorate at Milton, 87, 97. 
Patriotism, 14, 46, 518, 542, 545. 
Patterson, Rev. J. B., 87, 133, 292. 

Rev. James, 248. 
Paul and Payson had the same 

grace, 6. 
Paxton Boys, 21. 

Peace and purity from agitation, 354. 
Perils of frontier life, 30. 



Persecution for prosecution, 312. 
Peters, Dr. Absalom, 208, 215, 334, 

336. 
Philadelphia in 1817, 74. 

Mr. Junkin's first field, 74. 
Mr. Junkin's first visit to, 57. 
" Philadelphian," 210, 213. 
Phillips, Dr. W. W., 64, 72, 268, 272, 

318, 347, 349, 542. 
Physician, letters to a, 134. 
Pioneer, reminiscences of a, 121. 
Pittsburg Convention, extract from 

minutes of, 586. 
Placard on watch-boxes, 284. 
Plan of Union, 139, 181, 184, 275; 

abrogated, 370. 
Plumer, Dr. Wm. S., 368. 
" Political Fallacies," 533-535, 546- 

548. 
Politics in school, 32. 
Potts, Dr. George, 349, 365. 
Pratt, Rev. H. S., 364. 
Prayer-meetings, the first, 62, 90. 
Preachers, early, of Cumberland, 27, 

35- 
Preachings of Dr. Junkin, 84, 95, 148. 
Predestination, the father's letter on, 

44. 
" Presbyterian," origin of, 210. 
Presbyterians and Quakers, 20. 

none of the former Tories, 23. 
of England, 196. 
Presbytery of Monongahela, 68, 81. 
of New Brunswick, 361. 
of Newton's letter to Princeton, 

261. 
the Assembly's Second formed, 
233- 
nullifies acts of Synod, 247. 
sustained by Assembly of 
1834, 248. 
Press vs. Old School, 211, 307. 
Preston, Rev. D. R., 257, 
Col. J. T. L., 504. 
Mrs. M. J., 505. 
Price, Eli K., Esq., letter of, 515. 
Priestley, Dr., 64. 

Princeton professors, letter to, 261. 
their position, 360. 
deputation to, 359. 
Prophecy studied and explained, 

125 ; lectures on, 414. 
Protest against action on Western 
Memorial, 254. 
against acts of Assembly of 1837, 
375- 



6o8 



INDEX. 



Protest anent Western Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society, 348. 

on Barnes' acquittal, 339. 

on elective affinity, 249. 
Proudfit, Rev. Mr., 72. 

Quaker policy with Indians, 21. 
Quakers and Presbyterians, 20. 

Ramsey, Dr. James, 41. 
Dr. James B., 485. 
Rankin, Henry, Esq., 349. 
Reductio ad odium, Mr. Barnes', 325. 

Dr. Junkin's answer to, 325. 
Reform, 97; of 1828, 128. 
Religion not to blame for the faults 

of its professors, 306. 
" Religious Farmer," no. 
Reply to protest in Barnes' case, 341. 
Report of Committee on Memorial, 

269. 
Resolution of Dr. Miller on Barnes' 
case, 338. 
of Dr. Skinner on Foreign Mis- 
sions, 347. 
Resolutions of General Assembly 
concerning death of Dr. Jun- 
kin, 579. 
of Presbyterian Board of Publi- 
cation, 580. 
of Trustees of Lafayette College, 
S80. 
Revolutionary services of the father, 

14. 
Rice, Dr. J. H., 222. 
Dr. N. L., 473. 
Richards, Rev. Dr., 214. 
Ritner, Governor, 33. 
Ross, Dr. F. A., 215. 
Rule of interpretation, 55, 331. 
Ruse of Dr. Ely, 305. 

of Second Presbytery, 302, 305. 
Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 85. 

Sabbath, labors in behalf of, 560. 

the physician's, 136. 
Sabbath-school, first in New York, 63. 

schools organized, 90. 
Sabbatismos, 561. 
Scholarship, standard of, high, 432. 
School system of Pennsylvania, Dr. 
Junkin one of its founders, 158. 
Scotch-Irish, characteristics of, 19. 

friends of education, 24. 

no Tories among them, 23. 

Quakers jealous of, 20. 



Scotch-Irish the frontiersmen, 19. 
Seminary, theological, a new Old 
School one proposed, 356. 

Union, founded, 361. 
Sermon, Dr. Junkin's before General 
Assembly, 470. 

Dr. Junkin's last, 564, 565. 

memorial, Dr. Knox's, 528. 
Session, church, hold the keys, 131. 
Seward, Rev. Mr., catechised, 373. 
Sheddan, Dr. S. S., 105. 
Sickness of Dr. Junkin, 113. 
Skinner, Dr. T. H., 230, 347, 362. 
Slavery in Assembly of 1845, 474. 
Slidell, John, 60. 

A. McK., 68. 
Smyth, Dr. Thomas, 365. 
Socinianism, 183, 
Spring resolutions, 533. 
Sproull, Rev. A. W., 487. 
Squier, Rev. Miles P., 390. 
Steel, Rev. Robert, D.D., 64, 140, 
237, 281, and Appendix, 594. 

son drowned, 482. 
Stevens, Hon. T., 159, 160. 
Stille, John, Esq., 297, 313. 
Stoever, Prof. M. L., 549. 

letter, etc., 575. 
Students of Lafayette commended, 

156. 
Swift, Dr. E. P., 223, 224. 
Sympathy for Mr. Barnes, 311. 
Synod of Delaware formed, 248. 
is dissolved, 276. 

of New Jersey, after division, 

39 6 - 

of Philadelphia, 200, 228, 233. 

of Pittsburg, and missions, 224. 
Synods of Western Reserve, Geneva, 
Utica, and Genesee declared 
extra ecclesiam, 372, 375. 

"Tabernacle," treatise on, 559. 

Tait, Rev. Samuel, 39. 

Tappan, Arthur, 229. 

Taylor, Dr., 198. 

Temperance labors, 91, 98, 508, 560. 

resolve, 70. 
Testimonials, Easton meeting, 388. 

of individuals, 568, 575, 576, 577. 

of public bodies, 579, 580. 
Testimony against error adopted, 

37°. 
Thaver, Dr., ^41. 
Tho'rnwell, Dr. J. H., 473. 
Tod, Governor, 542. 



INDEX. 



609 



Toleration of error, 256. 

Tornado, 126. 

Tract labors, 94, 112. 

Tragedy of Cumberland, 31. 

Trial, Mr. Barnes' first, 146 ; second, 
277 ; arrested, 293 ; proceeds, 
294 ; before Synod, 301 ; before 
General Assembly, 319; result 
of, explained, 334, 336. 

Trials cannot be begun by letter, 285. 
must be of the author, not of a 
book, 238, 282. 

Truth and freedom, 470. 

Union of Associate Reformed and 
Presbyterian Churches, 93, 

of States, Dr. Junkin's labors and 
speeches for, 512, 517, 546. 

of two branches by Mr. Barnes' 
trial, 356. 

of two branches of church, 563, 

S83. 
Unitarian controversy, 109. 
Unity in the truth Dr. Junkin's aim, 

35°- 

Van Rensselaer, Dr. C, 116. 
Van Vechten, Rev. Dr., 64. 
Vices, popular, resisted, 102. 
Vindication book, 308. 

quotations from, 277. 

things necessary to Dr. Junkin's, 
200. 
Virginia, secession of, 516. 

what Dr. Junkin left in, 517. 
Voluntary societies, 191. 



Wall Street Church, 73. 
Wallace, Rev. R. M., 487. 

character, etc., 576. 

estimate of, 556. 
War, civil, and Dr. Junkin, 509, 
545- 

for Union, Dr. Junkin approves 
of, 545, 546, 561. 

of Independence, 31. 

of 1812, 46, 49. 
Washington, George, 483. 
Washington College, 482, 492, 495. 

action of its Faculty, 522. 
Watts, Dr. Robert, 485, 487. 
Weir, Silas E., 73. 
Western Foreign Missionary Society, 

224, 346. 
White, Dr. Henry, 362, 

Dr. Wm. S., 496. 
Widows' Asylum, labors in, 559, 

565. 
Wilson, Dr. Joshua L„ 265, 268, 
35i- 

prosecutes Beecher, 240. 
Winchester, Rev. S. G., 284. 
Wisner, Rev. Dr. William, 274. 
Witherspoon, Dr. John, 268. 

Moderator, 318. 
Wolf, Gov. George, 159. 
Wolff, Dr. Bernard C, 414. 
Wray, Robert, 268. 
Wylie, Rev. Wm., 257. 

Yeomans, Dr. J. W., 409, 465. 

Zeal, Dr. Junkin's, for education, 153. 



